Los Alamos

by Joseph Kanon

  “Firewater.” She giggled.

  “You’re not kidding,” he said, holding his throat.

  “Careful it doesn’t go to your head.”

  “Like the song.”

  “What song?”

  “You don’t know that song?”

  She shook her head.

  “Just a song. You’ll hear it sometime. We’ll go to a club—they’re always playing it. Encourages the drinking.”

  “Like here?” she said, cocking her head toward the jukebox, still pumping out Western music.

  “They don’t need encouragement here. If you can drink through that, you can drink through anything. God,” he said, reacting to another sip. “I’d better slow down.”

  “It always hits you when you’re tired.”

  “That was before. When we were hiking and fighting rattlesnakes and then had to watch Charles Atlas kick sand in my face.”

  She laughed. “Did we do all that?”

  “On one lousy sandwich.”

  “Sounds wonderful.” She put her hand over his. “Let’s do it again.”

  He looked at her eyes, bright in the smoky light. “Whenever you say.”

  The Indian woman stood at the edge of the table, waiting for them to separate hands before she unloaded the tray—big heavy bowls of mutton stew with a large basket of Navajo fry bread. She set the table with surprising delicacy, placing clunky spoons down without a sound, arranging a bandanna-like napkin.

  “Thank you,” Emma said.

  “Sure.”

  “And another round of drinks when you get a minute.”

  “Sure.” She moved slowly away, pulled by an unseen tug.

  Emma giggled. “Do you think she can say anything else? I haven’t heard one other word. Shall we bet on it? A dollar?”

  “No fair prompting.”

  “Okay. How’s the stew?”

  “Now I know why the Anasazi went away.”

  “That bad?”

  “Not when you close your eyes.”

  But it was hot, and each thick gray spoonful filled him, spreading warmth through his body like a wonderful liniment.

  “How do they stay in business, do you think?” he said.

  “It’s probably just outside Indian land. There’s always a place over the border to sell liquor.”

  He tore off a piece of fry bread, amused at his own appetite. When he looked up again from the stew, he found her watching him, part of the slow, easy warmth that enveloped them now like steam. The beer took on flavor as he gulped it. They talked of nothing, little snippets that kept them company as they ate, then evaporated, forgotten. Before the bowl was finished he had to sit back, flushed with well-being, his head buzzing gently now with half-heard sounds from the bar. The loud, twangy music had stopped.

  He got up and went over to the jukebox, hoping to find something before the ranchers could fill it with more nickels. He scanned the selection slips glowing under the yellow light, running his eye down one unfamiliar cowboy title after another, and then, unaccountably, a wealth of music in the right-hand column—Teddy Wilson, Lester Young. Where had it all come from? It was the last thing he’d expected to find here. He stood there for a minute, fixated on the puzzle. Maybe the café was so remote that no one came to change the records. Maybe they’d siphoned off some free V Discs. The music was colored; maybe the record company traveler, unable to place them on his swing south, had dumped them finally into a juke for Indians. What did it matter? He fed nickels into the machine, pressed the ivory buttons, then came back to the table, a silly grin on his face, as the room picked up the tempo of “Sweet Lorraine,” the piano dancing over the steady bass. The ranchers looked at him, surprised, then turned back to mind their own business. The Indians never moved, a stocky frieze.

  They sat back, listening to the music and smoking, the stew bowls pushed to the middle of the table. The Indian woman came over to fill their glasses but didn’t bother to collect the dishes, as if she were still waiting for them to finish. They didn’t say anything for a while, watching the smoke, smiling at their luck. It’s the mood that I’m in. The music seemed to change the room like some slow trick of the light, the rough edges receding, so that the café took on the mellow glamour of the sounds, all wet glass rings on a bar and ashtrays and the hope of taking someone home.

  “Is this what it’s like?” she said quietly. “That club you’re taking me to?”

  He smiled. “Just like.”

  “And we’d sit and drink and look at each other.”

  “And dance.”

  “Yes.” She looked lazily around at the ranchers and Indians. “Someday.”

  The record changed to the piano runs of Teddy Wilson opening “The Very Thought of You.” Looking straight at her, he took her hand and stood up, the drink making him slow and fluid at the same time, an underwater movement.

  “Here?” she said, a little laugh, her arm extended in his, but her legs were crossed so she was unable to move.

  “Why not?” He continued to look at her, willing her upward with a gentle pull until her legs righted themselves and her body rose up, leaning into his. They stood still, awkward, his hand feeling the small of her back, and then the music led them, asking nothing more than one small conscious movement to start. Billie Holiday was doing the vocal. Their feet, slow with drink, moved forward without their thinking. The room slid into the haze of peripheral vision. I’m living in a kind of daydream. One of the old ranchers laughed at them, and Connolly, looking over her shoulder, grinned back, joining in the joke. They must look drunk. But every inch of him felt her now. He moved slowly, lightheaded, happy. When she pulled her head back from his shoulder, they looked at each other, surprised. The dancing was supposed to have been a joke, a little parody of another life. Now it was something else, another kind of joke. He wanted to laugh out loud at the unexpectedness of it. He had held girls like this before, half-drunken nights of good times and smoky rooms and sex, but it was here, miles from anywhere, filled with mutton stew and cheap whiskey, that it finally happened, the hope of a million popular songs.

  There was another record, then another, and they kept dancing, too tired to sit down. They didn’t see the ranchers leave. Could he have had so many nickels? The lights went off in the general store.

  “It’s late,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “I don’t know where we can go.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” His words were slow, part of the music.

  She touched the back of his neck. “This isn’t what you had in mind at all, is it?”

  “No.”

  “But it’s all right?”

  And it was. He wasn’t thinking about sex; he just wanted to hold her.

  “Can you drive?”

  “Can you?”

  “If I have some coffee.”

  But when they sat down, moving dreamily away from the empty floor, they found fresh drinks on the cleared table and they sipped them, the coffee forgotten. The music had stopped, but it was too late to play any more. They sat enjoying the quiet, the faint rattle of crockery in the back room, a scurrying of night sounds. He couldn’t stop looking at her. When the Indians left, two of them supporting the third, he only glanced at them for a minute. Then there was a sputter outside, a roar as the pickup ignition caught and pulled away, and it was quiet again. The Indian woman didn’t bother them, so they sat finishing their drinks, warm with sunburn and liquor, too drowsy to get up and go. His legs were heavy, glued to the scratchy booth.

  When the woman finally came to clear the glasses, she was dressed to leave, an old army jacket covering the beaded blouse. Emma asked about coffee as Connolly got out his money, looking up at the woman for the bill. There was no check. She took a few bills, then tucked them into her jacket.

  “No coffee. Back room,” she said, indicating a door and leading them there. She pulled the string of an overhead light to reveal a small storage room, piles of boxes next to an old rolltop desk, and, agains
t the wall, a day-bed covered with Navajo blankets. “Don’t drive,” she said. “Stay here.” Then, with a small smile, “Nobody bother.”

  She refused any money, waving off their thanks, and then turned the bar lights off and was gone.

  “Our suite at the Waldorf,” Emma said, smiling at the linoleum and the narrow bed.

  Connolly stood under the light bulb, unbuttoning her blouse.

  “I don’t think I can move,” she said.

  “No, don’t,” he said, kissing her.

  “The light,” she said. He reached up and pulled the cord, turning the room black. In the pitch dark there was only touch, the gritty feel of dust, and the smell of sweat and liquor, and when they fell on the bed, their bare skin against the rough blanket, they finally made love, slow as dancing, as if they had already gone to sleep.

  10

  THEY FOUND THE car on May 8th, the day the war ended in Europe. Connolly had spent the afternoon at a motel on the Taos road, a motor court with faded cabins that had become their usual place, and had stayed late. Daniel had been spending most of his time at the test site, but he was back again this week, so they had to steal what time they could, a few hours of afternoon on old sheets, the sun dimmed to evening by dusty Venetian blinds. At first Mills had been titillated by Connolly’s absences, but now, finally bored with someone else’s affair, he scarcely raised an eyebrow.

  “More research?” he said when Connolly turned up.

  “You ought to at least check in once in a while.”

  “Why? Did I miss something?”

  It was a standard joke between them. For days, weeks now, there had been nothing to miss. Ramon Kelly had been convicted, a one-day excitement for the Santa Fe New Mexican, a longer run for the Albuquerque papers, and the Hill had shrugged off the news with indifference and gone back to work. Karl Bruner, even as gossip, was gone, a few paragraphs on the crime blotter. Corporal Batchelor, a little nervous now at having come forward at all, had found nothing to report. Doc Holliday checked in regularly, but more out of boredom than progress. The files on Mills’s desk sat undeciphered, dusted once a week by the cleaning staff, waiting for a new key. All around them life on the Hill intensified—furloughs canceled, lights blazing at night as eighteen-hour workdays raced to some uncertain deadline—so that by contrast they seemed at a standstill, just holding their breath. Connolly, to his surprise, didn’t mind. He lived in the hurried, measured hours of motel rooms. There would be time enough later for everything else.

  “The car,” Mills said. “They found Karl’s car. One of Kisty’s men.”

  “Down at S Site? It’s been here all along?”

  “No.” Mills smiled. “Nothing that good. One of the box canyons off the plateau.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Join the club. Hell of a place to stash a car.”

  “Wrecked?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been waiting for you.” He glanced at his watch. “For hours, in fact.”

  “Well, let’s go.” Connolly led the way out of the office.

  “Relax, it’s not going anywhere. We’ve got a guard posted.”

  “We ought to call Doc.”

  “I did. He’ll wait for us at the west gate.” Mills met Connolly’s glance. “I told him you’d be back by five.”

  “Why five?”

  Mills shrugged. “I’m in security, remember? I notice things. You’re always back by five.”

  “Why is that, I wonder.”

  “I figure somebody’s got to be home.”

  “A detective.”

  Mills smiled. “It passes the time. Quiet around here lately.”

  “Feeling neglected?”

  “Me? I like it quiet. The Germans surrendered, by the way, in case you haven’t heard.”

  Connolly nodded. “You’d never know it here.” He looked around the Tech Area, as busy and undisturbed as ever.

  “Oh, they’ll pop a few corks tonight. You know the longhairs—work first.”

  “Unlike some of us, you mean.”

  “No. I figure you’re pretty busy.” He grinned. “Just thinking about it is what gets me through the days.”

  They drove past S Site, the explosives unit at the opposite end of the plateau, a new industrial plant of snaking steampipes, smokestacks, and hangars of heavy machinery. The Tech Area was the university, but S had the raw utility of a foundry, where blueprints were hammered into casings and people risked accidents.

  “Who found it?”

  “They were setting up a new firing range in one of the canyons off South Mesa. You know they like to keep the explosives off the Hill.”

  “Yes, it’s comforting.”

  Mills grinned. “Lucky this time, anyway. We never would have found it otherwise.”

  At the end of a road thick with conifers, they found Holliday standing at the gate, chatting with the young sentry.

  “You took your time.”

  The sentry, recognizing Connolly, gave an innocent half-salute.

  “Funny, isn’t it?” Mills said, catching the gesture. “All this time and I’ve never used this gate. You?” he said to Connolly.

  “Once in a while,” Connolly said, not looking at him.

  “Well, I don’t blame you,” Holliday said to Mills. “My friend here says they don’t get much traffic anytime. Nights they just close the road, so you’d have to drive all the way around to the front. Pretty discouraging if you didn’t know that.”

  “But everybody does,” the sentry said, his voice liquid with the South. “It’s just for Hill people. Trucks go to the east gate.”

  “And all us folks from the outside, eh?” Holliday said.

  “Ain’t nobody from outside on the Hill.”

  “No. Well, I guess that’s right. And here I was with my nose pressed against the screen, just like always.”

  Holliday followed their car as they skirted the plateau on winding switchbacks. The mesa was like a giant hand with a series of deep canyons between its fingers, some in turn breaking off into smaller box canyons that dipped away under the pine cover, lying as hidden as secrets. The car was in one of these, a mile or so from the entrance turnoff, at the end of an old dirt road partly overgrown with brush. An MP was posted where the car had driven off the dirt to carve its own path into the canyon floor. Mills cleared them and they moved toward the car, looking at the broken brush along the way.

  “Why the road?” Connolly said.

  “Probably an old logging road,” Holliday said. “They used to take a fair amount of timber out around here. You notice that canyon just before this one? There’s a real road there. They probably just gave up on this one.”

  “That’s the test range,” Connolly said.

  “What exactly they firing there?”

  “I don’t know.” Then, catching Holliday’s look, “Honestly.”

  “They’re measuring projectile velocity,” Mills said.

  They looked at each other, then at him. He laughed. “Well, I asked. That’s what they told me.”

  “You mean like how fast an arrow goes when you shoot it?” Holliday said.

  “Something like that.”

  “Sure are chewing up the trees to find out.” He pointed toward the end of the canyon, where a series of test explosions had opened a rough clearing.

  “But why come here?” Connolly said.

  “Well, if they hadn’t started shooting things up around here, nobody would have found it.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Holliday looked at him. “You mean why so close to the Hill.”

  Connolly nodded.

  “I don’t know. Let’s see what we got first. Maybe it’s not even his.”

  But there had been no attempt to disguise the car; the Hill license plate, the glove compartment registration were intact. The paint in front had been scratched by the drive through the brush, but otherwise the car was as Karl might have left it. The keys were still in the ignition switch.

/>   “That’s a nice touch,” Holliday said. “I’ve never seen that before.”

  “Can you have them checked for prints?”

  “I could, but I’ve got no jurisdiction here.”

  “Nobody does. You’re just assisting the Manhattan Project of the Army Corps of Engineers.” Connolly smiled at him. “War work.”

  “You got a paper if I need it?”

  “We’ve got nothing but paper.”

  “I think there’s some blood here,” Mills said, looking at the back floor.

  “Yes, sir,” Holliday said. “Don’t touch that, now—we’ll see if we can get a match.”

  “Try a church parking lot,” Connolly said. “I guarantee it.”

  There was nothing unusual in the trunk. Aside from the bloodstains in the back, where Karl’s head must have been laid, the car was clean.

  “Let me try something,” Connolly said, taking a handkerchief in his right hand. He got in and twisted the key. The motor turned over and started. He sat at the wheel for a minute, listening to the hum, running Karl’s car as he had worn his boots. When he turned it off, the canyon was quiet enough to hear the birds.

  “Why save the key?” he said, handing it, wrapped, to Holliday.

  “Why anything?” Holliday said. “These things—they don’t have to make sense.”

  “Yes they do. They don’t have to be sensible, but they have to make sense.”

  “I’ll get the boys to go over the whole thing for prints,” Holliday said, ignoring him. He was searching the ground. “Too much traffic here.”

  “Kisty’s men,” Mills said. “They didn’t know it was a crime scene.”

  “Let’s check it anyway,” Connolly said. “You never know. You want to square it with the guard?” he said to Mills. It was a polite dismissal and Mills took it, moving back to the road.

  “What’s on your mind?” Holliday said.

  “I can’t see the logistics of this,” Connolly said, staring at the car as if there were a visible answer. “Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, you kill Karl at San Isidro. You put him in the back and then you dump him in the park. Why not just dump him here?” He looked up at Holliday’s stare. “Okay, you want him found, just the way you said. Like that, like it was something else. Why not find the car too? Why not just leave it in Santa Fe near the park? The blood, I guess,” he said, talking to himself.