A Wasteland of Strangers

by Bill Pronzini

  I took some of the gauze pads out of their wrappings and he used half to clean the wounds and then we taped on the rest. He had a little trouble breathing when we were done, so I helped him lie back flat. Then, with him raising his butt and pushing with his hands and me tugging, we managed to get the Levi’s off. He said, “You can leave my shorts on,” but I said, “They’re wet, and I’ve seen guys naked before,” and I worked those off, too. I couldn’t help sneaking a look at him down there. Oh, boy. Even shriveled up from the cold, his dick made Anthony’s look like an Oscar Mayer reject.

  When he was wrapped in the blankets, the thermal one underneath against his bare skin, he asked me what time it was. I looked at my watch and told him, “Quarter to ten.”

  “That late? A wonder I lasted long enough for you to find me.”

  “How long’ve you been here?”

  “Most of the night.”

  “It must be more than a mile from here to Mrs. Carey’s. You couldn’t have swum all that way.”

  “No. I wasn’t in the lake more than ten minutes the first time, maybe twenty altogether. Walked and crawled, mostly.”

  “How’d you keep them from seeing you?”

  “Dark took care of that. Dark and blind luck. Couple of them got close enough to touch me, but I was hiding under a dock on a crosspiece where their lights didn’t reach.”

  “Everybody thinks you drowned. Or else the cold got you.”

  “They were almost right. I couldn’t’ve gotten any farther than here. Passed out as soon as I climbed in under the tarp.” He looked at me for a few seconds, and then he said, “I didn’t kill her, Trisha. Mrs. Carey.”

  “I know it. I wouldn’t’ve helped you if I thought you did.”

  “I hope you don’t regret it. If they find you here with me—”

  “They won’t. They’re not looking down this far.”

  “But they are still looking.”

  “For your body, not for you.”

  “Audrey Sixkiller … where’s she?”

  “Probably down at the Elem rancheria by now. She has a tribal council meeting at eleven. I was supposed to meet her here at nine, but she must’ve forgot.”

  “Better beat it while you can.”

  “Don’t worry, she won’t be back until after one—”

  I stopped because the wind slackened just then and I heard rumbling noises out on the lake. John heard them, too. He said, “What’s that?”

  “Boat engine. Sounds like the sheriff’s launch.”

  “Coming this way?”

  “Yeah, but they can’t see us if we stay down.”

  I stretched out flat alongside him. The engine sounds got louder, closer. John was breathing fast and raspy again; I could feel him all tense inside the blankets. I felt bad for him. And mad, too, on account of what’d happened to him and how wrong everybody was about him. Why couldn’t they see him the way I did—a good guy, not a bad one?

  The launch glided past at least a hundred yards offshore without slowing any. I waited a couple of minutes more, until the engine sounds began to fade, then rose up and looked and couldn’t see anything except gray water. I climbed out and went to the end of the float for a quick look. When I came back I said to John, “They’re gone. On their way back to Southlake, looks like. That might mean they’ve called off the search.”

  “Might.” But he didn’t sound convinced.

  “You want to sit up now?”

  He said he did and I helped him. He huddled against the gunwale, not saying anything. He was still shaking but in little spasms, not hard like before. His skin color didn’t seem as gray anymore.

  “You look better,” I said.

  “Feel better. Warmer. I’ll be okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. You get going. The longer you hang around here, the more risk of you being caught with me.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “I do. Go on, beat it.”

  “If I beat it, then what? What’ll you do?”

  “Sit here until I feel stronger.”

  “Then what?”

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  “Yes I do. Tell me, John.”

  “I don’t know. See if I can hot-wire the ignition, maybe.”

  “That’s good, getting away in the boat. But where to?”

  “Somewhere on the other side of the lake. My problem, for Chrissake, not yours—”

  “Big problem,” I said, “if anybody sees you driving Ms. Sixkiller’s boat. Everybody around here knows it’s hers. And even if you do make it all the way across, what’ll you do then? You’re hurt too bad to do much except hide for a while, but you don’t know the area well enough to find a safe place. And you’d have to leave the boat and they’d find it and then they’d know where you went. Right?”

  He was quiet again, watching me.

  “I do know a safe place,” I said. “I can take you straight to it and get you inside.”

  “… What place?”

  “You’ll see. It’s safe, believe me. Nobody goes there. Nobody has any reason to anymore.”

  “Get there by boat?”

  “Right to it. You won’t need to try hot-wiring the ignition, either. I know where Ms. Sixkiller keeps the key.” On a hook next to the fridge in her kitchen; I’d seen it and some others hanging there on my way out with the blankets and other stuff. “It’ll only take me a couple of minutes to get it.”

  “You know how to drive a boat like this?”

  “Sure. It’s not hard. From a distance, with my scarf over my head, I’ll pass for Ms. Sixkiller and you’ll be hidden back here under the tarp. After you’re safe, I’ll bring the boat back and she’ll never even know it was out.”

  “Unless she comes home meanwhile.”

  “It won’t take more than an hour and a half, round trip. That’s more than enough time.”

  “She could still come back early. What if she’s here when you bring the boat in?”

  “I’d tell her I went for a ride. She wouldn’t turn me in to the cops or anything. Just yell at me a little. She’s cool.”

  “The things you took from her house—she’s bound to miss them.”

  “No, she won’t.” She would, once she saw the broken bathroom window, but I didn’t care about that right now and I didn’t want John to worry about it. I was so torqued up over helping him escape that nothing else seemed to matter, including the fetus growing inside me. It was dangerous, yeah, but it was also, like, major exciting. And I was doing it for all the right reasons, wasn’t I? Besides, my life was so totally screwed up now, what difference did it make if it got even more screwed up later on?

  John said, “I don’t like it.”

  “But you know it’s the only way. Neither of us wants you to go to prison or the gas chamber for something you didn’t do.”

  “Yeah.” He said it hard and angry, but it wasn’t me he was pissed at. I knew that. “But you be careful. And you promise me something before we go. Promise me if we get caught together, you tell the law I forced you to help me. Threatened you, and you were too scared not to do what I told you.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so. Promise me, Trisha.”

  “I promise. So let’s stop talking and just do it, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said in that same angry voice. “We’ll do it.”

  Anthony Munoz

  THE FIRST THING Mateo says when I walked into his pad was, “Where were you last night, little brother? You know what went down? You hear what a wild-ass scene it was?”

  “I heard. The old man was yapping about it when I got up.”

  “Cracked her skull, man. Cracked it wide open.”

  “Yeah. Leaves a bad taste, man. That Mrs. Carey was a fox.”

  “Lagarta’s more like it. Jode y una mamada, that’s all she was good for. Well, she picked the wrong dude this time.”

  “Yeah. But she didn’t deserve no cracked skull.”
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br />   “You don’t think so? I think so.”

  “Why? Because she dissed you that time you tried to hit on her?”

  “She was a bitch, man.”

  “I don’t know, man. Dyin’ like that …”

  “Ain’t no good way to die, is there?”

  “Got that right. Old man says Faith drowned in the lake.”

  “Maybe the dude did, maybe he didn’t.”

  “Or he iced out there. The old man says—”

  “The old man don’t know his dick from a paint scraper.” Mateo laughed. “I’d love it if the dude’s still alive, gets away with it. I’d love it, man.”

  “Why?”

  “Told you, bro. She was a bitch and she had it comin’.”

  “I don’t know, man.”

  “What do you know, man? Sometimes I wonder about you.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “Just wonder. So where were you, Anthony? Man, we had a bigger street party than ten freakin’ Fourth of Julys. Dudes cruisin’, dudes doin’ crank and blow and weed right in front of the heat, TV trucks, even a freakin’ TV helicopter. A freakin’ circus, man. And you missed the whole show.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Out balling Trisha, huh? Don’t you ever get enough pussy?”

  “Too much pussy, that’s what I been getting.”

  “No such thing, man.”

  “She’s knocked up.”

  “No shit? Trisha?”

  “Who else.”

  “You go divin’ without a wet suit?”

  “One time. One freakin’ time.”

  “That’s all it takes, bro. Sure it’s yours?”

  “Yeah, it’s mine. She don’t lie, man.”

  “So what, then? She wants you to marry her?”

  “What the hell else.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “I told her no way, man.”

  “That’s my man. Marriage sucks.”

  “Big time. Yeah.”

  “It’s for jerks and squares, man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look at the old man and old lady. Him so wore out from paintin’ houses all day, he can’t do nothing at night except yell and swill down cheap wine. She ain’t no better. Don’t give a shit about me and you, each other, nothing but TV and Carlo Rossi.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dudes like us, we got to be free. Free and easy, man. Go places, do things, see the fuckin’ world, get ourselves a piece of the good life. No wives, no babies, no tied-down bullshit for Anthony and Mateo. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So how’d she take it? Trisha.”

  “Went ballistic, man. Jumped out of the car, ran off and hid in the freakin’ trees. I couldn’t find her.”

  “Where was this, man?”

  “The Bluffs.”

  “So what’d you do?”

  “Drove off and left her.”

  “Yeah, man.” He put his hand out and I slapped it. “So then what’d you do?”

  “I was pissed, you know? Wild. Drove around lookin’ for you, Petey, somebody to hang with. Nobody around.”

  “We was partyin’, man. Leon’s homestead.”

  “Never thought to check Leon’s. Shit.”

  “So then what’d you do?”

  “Drove down to Southlake.”

  “Lookin’ to score?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d you get? Crank? Blow?”

  “No man. Ecstasy.”

  “Cool. How was it?”

  “Lame, man. I still don’t feel right.”

  “How about some grass, pick you right up.”

  “Nah. I don’t wanna get high.”

  “Half quarts of Green Death in the fridge.”

  “Not that neither. Too early, man.”

  “Never too early. Come on, let’s pop one.”

  “Yeah, okay. What the hell.”

  Mateo went out to the kitchen to get the brews. I didn’t want one, but I felt wrong for sure and I needed a lift. Wrong about leaving Trisha up there on the Bluffs even if she did go hag-crazy on me, all that cagueta about the baby and then running off and wouldn’t come out of the freakin’ trees. Wrong about that Mrs. Carey, too. Murder, man … it ain’t right to kill somebody unless he’s tryin’ to ice you. It ain’t right to hurt a chick that way, no matter who she is.

  Mateo’s pad is cool, man. Real dank. Old building down by the boatyard, second-floor pad with a little balcony so you can sit and check out the lake when the weather’s right … suck down a brew or smoke a joint, whatever. Nobody lives here gives a Frenchman’s fuck. He’s got it fixed up with NASCAR posters, blowup color pix from Laguna Seca and Sears Point and Indy races. Not much furniture, none of the crap most people have. He’s got the front seat out of a ’52 Olds for a couch and buckets from a ’Vette and a TransAm for chairs. Can’t get much more dank than that.

  I got up from the tuck-and-roll ’Vette bucket and went to look at the biggest blowup. Real fiery Indy crash, one driver spinning out and hitting a wall, another car sliding into the flames. Cool. But I couldn’t get my head into it. I kept flashing on Trisha and that goddamn baby, her going hag-crazy and me leaving her up there. Wasn’t right, man. No matter what Mateo said, I shouldn’t’ve done it.

  Well, she’d got home okay. That was one thing I didn’t have to sweat about. No answer when I buzzed her homestead this morning, so I took the wheels over there. Wasn’t nobody home, but one of the neighbors says she seen Trisha walking off somewheres about a half hour before. So that was like a major relief, man. Didn’t want nothing to do with me or she’d’ve tried to get in touch. Then why’d it keep bugging me like this? I didn’t want a kid, and she wouldn’t either when she thought it over hard enough. Her old man sure as hell wouldn’t, not that dude. He’d tell her to lose it same as I did and she would and that’d be the end of it, right? She’d never have nothing more to do with me, but what the hell, I didn’t love her or anything, right?

  “What’s the sad eye for?” Mateo was back with a couple of half quarts of Green Death. “Trisha?”

  “Yeah.” I popped the tab on my can and sucked down half the ale before I came up for air. “Trisha, that Mrs. Carey, the lame stuff I scored in Southlake … everything, man. Nothing feels right today.”

  “Most days, man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s this town, bro. Town, lake, county, the whole fuckin’ sack.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was thinking maybe I oughta go find Trisha, talk to her. Yeah. Talk some sense into her. I didn’t want a kid, didn’t love her, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have no feelings for her.

  “Boneyard’s what it is,” Mateo says. “Keep on hangin’ here, you end up hung dead and worm food. You know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Loud and clear, man.”

  “So why don’t we get out, man?”

  “Get out?”

  “Split for a place that’s got life, action.”

  “Like where?”

  “Like L.A. You know that’s where I always wanted to be, man. I been thinkin’ about it a lot lately.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Plenty happening down there, man. Couple of young dudes like us, hot with engines and wheels, we grab us a piece of the good life in no time.” He winked. “Plenty of almeja down there, too, man.”

  “You mean just pick up and split?”

  “We got nothing keepin’ us here, right? Old man and old lady’d love it if you moved out, both of us outta their hair for good. And no more sweat about Trisha’s kid. I mean, suppose she tries to stick you for support? Can’t pry cash out of a dude if they can’t find him, right?”

  “Yeah. But when would we go?”

  “Sooner the better. Tomorrow.”

  “Oh, man, that’s too fast …”

  “Listen, Anthony, either we put this hole behind us, change our freakin’ lives, or we don’t.”

  “I don’t know, man. I got to think about it …”


  “Yeah, sure,” Mateo says. “Just don’t think too long. I made up my mind—I’m outta here. With or without you, little brother, real soon.”

  Douglas Kent

  THEY WOULDN’T LET me see her. I wasn’t a relative by blood or marriage, friends of the victim were not allowed viewing privileges, members of the media weren’t allowed viewing privileges, the autopsy had yet to be performed … a litany of official bullshit. The word “autopsy” funneled bile into my throat. Images of Storm with that beautiful head of hers shattered, lying cold and waxy and forever still on a metal table, was bad enough; images of her being drawn and quartered like a butchered heifer, her juices running in troughs or being sucked up through vacuum hoses, was intolerable.

  I demanded an audience with the coroner, Johanssen. Pomo General’s head nurse didn’t want to let me see him, either. Head pounding, stomach churning, Kent pitched a small and voluble fit. When she saw I was perfectly willing to escalate into a large and disruptive fit, she went and fetched Johanssen.

  Waste of time. Mine. He was harried and snippy and wouldn’t tell me much of anything. Had instructions not to release specific details gleaned from his preliminary examination of the deceased, he said. That was what he called her, “the deceased,” even though he’d known Storm well enough—they both belonged to the country club, attended the same charity fund-raisers.

  No, Johanssen said, he couldn’t tell me whether or not she’d been raped. No, he couldn’t say if she had suffered any wounds or traumas other than the blows that had killed her. (But he insisted on providing me with a full medical description of the cause of death, as if he needed to prove his qualifications for the job of corpse handler. “Temporal skull fracture leading to subdural hematoma of mid brain. Death of brain due to necrosis or mass effect. Secondary edema causing herniation through foramen magnum, that is, the brain stem.” Jesus!) Had I spoken to Chief Novak or Mayor Seeley yet? No? Well, why didn’t I go and do that? Or perhaps I’d be better advised to go home and sleep it off.

  “I’m not drunk,” I said. Yet.

  “Your breath and your appearance contradict that statement.”

  Kent stood in impotent rage as the pompous little prick walked off, his back straight and his bald pate gleaming in the hallway fluorescents.