Los Alamos

by Joseph Kanon

The soldier shrugged. “Lots of people know him. He gets around.”

  “So do you, huh?”

  He stiffened. “No, not like that. Ramon’s just one of those guys who’s around, you know?”

  “In the bar.”

  “Yeah, in the bar. But Karl wasn’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re looking at this wrong. He wasn’t—”

  Connolly waited for him to finish, but he had stopped, whatever courage had prompted him now gone. “How do you know?” Connolly said finally.

  “I’d know, that’s all.”

  “You were a friend of Karl’s?”

  “No, just from the office.”

  “That’s right, you’re a driver. So you’d be attached to the office.”

  The soldier bit his lip.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to say anything. I don’t even want to know who you are.”

  “What’s the difference? You could find out in a minute.”

  “Why say anything, then?”

  “You’re right, maybe I’m crazy. It’s just I can see where this is all going. I’ve seen it before. They start looking at everything. I hear you’re going through our savings accounts.” He smiled at Connolly’s expression. “I have a friend over in admin,” he explained. “Things get around. Everybody gets along fine here. Nobody bothers anybody. But now you think it’s a sex crime. Wait and see. All hell will break loose. I was on a base once where they started—”

  “I’m not looking for that.”

  “No? And what if you find it? All the sudden they’ve got records on people, stuff they never bothered about before, and then you’ve got trouble. I’ve seen it. That’s bad enough, but this time there’s no point. It all starts because of Karl and he wasn’t like that.”

  Connolly was quiet. “So you said before. How do you know?”

  “I’d know,” he said again.

  “You guys have a secret handshake or something? Like the Masons?”

  The soldier wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Okay, forget it. I knew I was crazy to do this.”

  “I think it took a lot of guts.”

  “You do, huh?”

  “Yes, I do. But what do you expect me to do with this? Ignore everything because it might be inconvenient for you? You didn’t even know the guy. All we can go on is what we know, and what we know here is we’ve got a guy dead in the park with his pants down.”

  The soldier looked at him. “I could pull your pants down right here and what would that make you?”

  The quiet hung between them. “If you killed me, I guess it would make me Karl.”

  The soldier nodded, then turned to walk away.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Connolly said after him, watching him turn back with suspicion. “What if you look for me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe you’re right. But what if you’re not? What if Karl was so secretive that even you couldn’t spot it?”

  “And?”

  “It’s important that we know for sure, know who his friends were. Know who he was seeing. We need to talk to other people who might know.”

  “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. That’s the deal. You’re telling me there are things going on up here I don’t know anything about and I’m going to make a mess trying to find out. Okay, I won’t. No mess. You do it for me. Talk to people—don’t tell me who, just tell me if you find out anything about Karl. I’ll look somewhere else. If you’re right, fine. I’ll take your word for it. But make sure. That’s your part of the deal.”

  “No tricks?”

  “No tricks. You’d be doing me a favor. And your friends. Nobody wants to turn the place upside down.”

  The soldier stuck out his hand and took Connolly’s. “Christ, I don’t believe I’m doing this. What does this make me, an undercover cop?”

  Connolly smiled. “Well, you’ve got the handshake down.”

  “Nobody knows about this, promise?”

  Connolly nodded. “By the way, what’s your name? So I don’t have to look it up.”

  “Batchelor.” He grinned. “Yeah, I know. Some joke. Maybe it was in the stars. Okay, I’ll let you know if I come up with anything. But don’t get your hopes up. I’m right about this.”

  “Just out of curiosity, do you always know?”

  “Well, sometimes you hope. It would be nice to be wrong about you, for instance.”

  Connolly was shocked, then laughed, caught off-guard. “Am I supposed to be flattered?”

  “No, I think that about lots of people,” he said, waving his hand in a mock salute as he left.

  Connolly watched him for a minute, then turned toward the dormitory. He felt cheered by the meeting, as if a road sign had been replaced, finally sending him on his way instead of around in circles. But now there was the deflation of having to begin over. Los Alamos began with a secret and now it seemed it lived on them, one layer wrapped around another. He wished for a minute to be back at the movie, where everything was before you, a shining self-contained surface that stopped at the edge of the screen, hiding nothing.

  9

  THE CAR WAS still covered in early morning dew, a film of rime catching the pale light, but she came out in hiking shorts, her long legs shivering in the cold. She threw her knapsack in the back as she motioned him to the passenger seat.

  “Are you trying to be provocative?” he said.

  “Come on,” she said quietly. “It’s bloody freezing. I want to get the heater going.”

  “Next time you could wear nothing at all.”

  “You’d like that, would you?” she said, pulling the car away and heading west. “You’d be surprised how fast it heats up here. It’ll be boiling in a few hours. Any trouble getting away?”

  “Not when you write your own passes.”

  She grinned at him and he saw that she was excited, as if they were children ducking out of school and the day an adventure.

  “Where are you going? The gate’s that way.” He pointed behind them.

  “West gate. We’ll take the back road—it’s faster.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said, thinking about the investigation. “I just forgot there was another gate. I’ve never been there.”

  “You haven’t missed much.”

  In fact it was much smaller than the east entrance, with a single sleepy MP at the barrier, stifling a yawn as he checked the passes and waved them through.

  “There’s tea in the Thermos. Hope you don’t mind, but I hate drinking coffee all day.”

  “As long as it’s hot.”

  They turned right onto Route 4 and climbed higher into the mountains, the mist burning away from dense green forests of pine and aspen. The heater blasted at their feet, a cocoon of warmth, and tiny streams of condensation streaked off the hood of the car.

  “You brought coupons?” she asked.

  “Isn’t that what I’m here for?”

  “It’ll do for a start.”

  “How far is this place, anyway, or are we just going to a hotel?”

  “Miles and miles. It’ll take the morning, so just sit back and relax. Oh, but wait till you see it. It’s marvelous—nothing like it anywhere.”

  He watched her drive, remembering the trip back from Tesuque, when he first thought it would be possible. They kept climbing, the sun rising with them, so that when they finally reached the high ridge the land was flooded with light. Aside from one rusty pickup truck with goats in the back, headed toward Santa Fe, theirs was the only car on the road. Connolly rolled down the window, breathing in a rush of fresh air, and looked out across an immense valley of grass. A handful of cattle were grazing, clotting the rippling fields like miniatures in a diorama, the grass arranged in folds of green velvet. A series of peaks surrounded the bowl. It was a world away from the Rio Grande Valley, with its low, twisted conifers and dry riverbeds.

  “That’s the
Valle Grande,” she said, nodding to the right. “Except it isn’t. It’s really a caldera—you know, the top of a volcano. It stretches for miles back there, beyond those hills. It just kept bubbling and falling in until you had this great lake of lava. And now this. It’s wonderful riding. Oppie likes to come here—you can really let the horses out. Down the other side you’re always running into arroyos, but up here, well—”

  She trailed off, letting him watch the view.

  “You spend much time with Oppenheimer?”

  “A little. Not lately. Last year it was easier, things weren’t quite so tense.”

  “Like him?”

  She considered. “Yes. Oh, it can be a bit much, all that man-of-destiny business, but I suppose he is, really.”

  “He’s difficult to read.”

  “Everyone’s difficult.”

  “Are you?”

  She laughed. “Ask anybody.”

  They were in the high mountains now, the trees close, with patches of alpine wildflowers dotting the clearings by the road. She was driving fast, putting distance between them and the Hill as if they were racing horses across the caldera. The car throbbed a little as they climbed, then galloped across the open stretches.

  “Do you still have to go away?” she said.

  “No. They made a mistake. I’m back to square one.”

  She took her eyes off the road for a second to look over at him. “Is that such a bad place to be?”

  “Not at the moment,” he said, smiling. “Trouble is, you can’t stay there.”

  “No,” she said. “But maybe for a little while.”

  She put her hand on his thigh, nothing more than a comforting pat, but it jumped at the touch, an involuntary spasm. The reaction made her laugh. “My,” she said, withdrawing her hand.

  Connolly felt teased, embarrassed to be so sensitive to her. “You can put it back if you like.”

  “Mmm. Maybe later,” she said. “You’ll need your strength for the hike. Where’d you get the boots, by the way?”

  “Borrowed.” He was going to tell her about Bruner’s closet, the disconcerting moment when the boots fit, as if he had learned something new about him, but Karl had been left behind at Los Alamos. There wasn’t room for anyone else in the car.

  “How do you manage this?” he said. “Being away. With your neighbors, I mean.”

  “Eileen? Oh, she doesn’t think anything of it. I’m always going off. It’s my project, you see. That’s the great thing about the Hill—everyone’s trained not to ask. So they don’t.”

  “What does she think you’re doing?”

  “What I am doing—studying Indians. Whatever that means. Actually, I don’t think she cares, really. She just swans around in blissful ignorance.”

  “Listening at walls.”

  She giggled. “Well, that’s something different, isn’t it?”

  “What about your husband?”

  “I left him a note,” she said quickly, not wanting to talk about it. “In case he’s back early.” Then, as if shifting into second, “God, it’s good to get away, isn’t it? Look at this morning.”

  So he let it go, glancing out the window at the shafts of light through the trees, thinking about Los Alamos. Everything was secure, so nothing was noticed. Then Los Alamos faded away too, left behind in a rush of miles and the bright, sharp air. They were heading west, where the day, even the landscape, was new.

  They drove for a long time without talking, as comfortable with the silence as an old couple, and then he sensed the gradual beginning of the descent. The dips seemed longer now, the road twisting to skirt the uneven hills. The speed they’d kept on the high ridge began to seem faster, hurtling them toward curves so that Emma was forced to brake to check the pull of gravity down the other slope. They raced up the sides of hills, unable to see over the top, pausing carefully before the downward plunge. The views were closed in, a series of hollows and bends. It reminded him of mountain roads in the East, up and down waves of hills.

  When they reached Jemez Springs, a cluster of buildings stretched a few blocks along the road, they had already slowed to thirty, so he was startled to hear the short whoop of a siren behind them. A police car, its roof light now shining in the morning sun, had slid out of its hiding place to follow them, motioning the car over to the side. “Oh God,” Emma said, pulling to the curb in front of a white clapboard hotel with the wide rocking-chair porch of an old Adirondack resort. The policeman, in full uniform, took his time getting out of the car. On this sleepy street in a notch of mountains, there was never a reason to hurry.

  “Ma’am,” he said in a cowboy drawl, “we got a twenty-mile speed limit in this town. It’s clearly posted. Can I see your license?”

  Connolly could see Emma about to rise to the bait, could already hear her sharp answer, but her shoulders shrank in resignation and wordlessly she handed the cop her wallet.

  “Oh, another one of these,” he said, glancing at the anonymous project license. “Well, I reckon we can write a ticket to a number just as well as a name.” He pulled out his ticket pad. “You from up that ranch school, huh? Funny thing, all you people with no names. Enough to make a person wonder. But that’s wartime—that’s what they tell me, anyways. You ought to slow down, though. Live longer.” Connolly recognized the tone, the mix of folksiness and swagger, as familiar as a blue uniform.

  “How much is it?” Emma said.

  “Ten dollars.”

  “You’re joking.”

  He looked at her sharply. “Well, no, ma’am. We don’t consider putting our children at risk a laughing matter.” The road was deserted.

  “But ten dollars,” she repeated, injustice rising in her voice.

  He smiled. “Well, you can mail it in. Lots of folks like to do that. Be sure you do, though. We’ll yank that license sure as shooting, name or no name.” He handed her the ticket, bending down to peer into the car. “You ought to get your wife here to slow down. Buy her a new dress. Cost you less in the long run.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said, automatically polite. He was struck by the smooth assumption of it. How easy it was to become someone else. The policeman would probably swear to it.

  “Bloody thieves,” she said after the cop had left. Connolly smiled. “It’s what we call a speed trap. It’s how they make their living.”

  She had begun driving out of town with exaggerated slowness, creeping along the street.

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “Anyway, now we’ve been arrested together. You said this would be an adventure.” He noticed that she was trembling, clutching the wheel to hold herself steady. “You all right?”

  “It just gave me a turn, that’s all. I must be mad to do this. I run off with a man and I’ve got the police onto me before I’m even down the mountain.”

  He laughed.

  “I suppose it is funny. But it’s not. The police. What if—?”

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “It’s not the driving.”

  “What, then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t like being married off so fast. Maybe I’m not very good at this.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to buy you a dress.”

  She smiled. “No, you wouldn’t.” She drove quietly for a minute. “I just don’t want anybody to get hurt,” she said softly.

  “Nobody’s going to get hurt.”

  “Yes they are,” she said, her voice distant. “We’re all going to get hurt.”

  He waited, afraid now of easy reassurance. “Does it make any difference?” he said finally.

  She didn’t answer, then slowly shook her head. “No. That’s what’s so awful. It doesn’t make any difference.” She shifted. “Oh, to hell with it,” she said suddenly, stepping on the gas. The car shot forward. “You never get two tickets in one day, do you? We might as well do as we like.”

  The road continued twisting downward, its curves even narrower, bordered only by a marg
in of soft shoulder. Emma hugged the center line, letting the sloping grade make its own speed, trusting the road. Connolly felt his ears pop. Here and there he saw signs of settlement, the surprise of a few fruit trees blossoming after so many miles of dark pine. The views began to open out to a wider sky, until finally they were near the bottom and the hills disappeared entirely, like curtains pulled back to show an immense panorama of red sandstone buttes and mesas, a sky beyond measuring. It was the most spectacular landscape Connolly had ever seen.

  On 44 they drove on a highway river, entering sandstone canyons dotted with slides of red rock and juniper whose walls grew higher and higher around them until they were completely surrounded by rock and then, a bend in the road, opening out again to a blue tent of sky. This was the West he had always imagined and never seen, not the cactus emptiness of the desert at Trinity, not even the greasewood and sage arroyo country of the Rio Grande, but land that seemed to exist at the beginning of time, monumental, so resistant to man that it found its beauty in geology, as if vegetation were a hapless afterthought. The mountains to the right seemed the border of the known world. Before them, the giant mesas rose up like islands from an old ocean floor, the distances between them whole seas of sandy earth. The walls were striated, discrete sediment layers of white and yellow and maroon and red, a color map of time, with slabs of rock broken or withered into shapes, statues of what might have been gods.

  He felt her smiling beside him, enjoying his reaction. When they finally left the twists of canyon walls and headed straight across the empty flat plateau, the promised heat arrived in a bright glare that flooded the open country with light. They rolled down the windows now to catch the dry air, baked with dust and sage. Clouds were everywhere, darting back and forth making shadows, so that the tawny grass would turn gray for an instant, then gleam yellow again when they passed. He saw chollo cactus and thin bushes whose names he didn’t know, survivors. The sun burned through the windshield. They were alone on the road, nothing around them for miles but a desolate landscape alive with clouds and shadows and hot wind.

  When they entered Chaco wash, they left the highway and bounced along a narrow dirt road, trailing dust behind them like smoke. Emma slowed down, dodging ruts and dry potholes with only a trace of moisture on their cracked muddy bottoms.