Under Tower Peak

by Bart Paul

  “Yeah. I can see how your old man would’ve had trouble remembering much himself.”

  “Maybe he survived the crash then walked away from it,” Sarah said. “With memory loss or something.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first crash the old scamp walked away from,” he said. “But now we got real proof he survived.” He looked happy as could be. “That he’s, you know, out there somewhere.”

  “Hey, maybe he was up at State Line with you yesterday, smoking crank with Albert Coffey.”

  “Tommy!”

  “Tommy,” he said, mimicking that tone she gets.

  “Albert was no tweaker. And neither was Callie Dean.”

  “Well,” GQ said with that sour-lemon smirk, “folks don’t need to do drugs to make money off scum who do.” He looked Sarah up and down. “I bet you see a lot of meth up here, right, Deputy Sarah?”

  “Hardly any right here, actually,” she said. She usually didn’t like it when guys checked her out like that. “We’ve been lucky, right, Tommy?”

  “Up here, meth is as rare as Cubans.”

  He gave us another stoner smile and lit a smoke.

  “So, Gerald, how come your old man would hide out? Walk away from all his cash?”

  He puckered his mouth around that cigarette and fiddled with the fake stampede string under his chin. That hat irritated the hell out of me. “Could be he just wanted to start a new life. His wife is a ball-breaking whore, excuse my French, Sarah. Who knows what wild hair guys that age get? Dad had a friend from Silicon Valley worth millions and millions. He gets in his sloop a while back, sails out the Golden Gate toward the Farallones in the fog to scatter his mother’s ashes—touching, no?—and just disappears. Poof. Sinks without a trace. They don’t find so much as a life jacket. Nada. So now his friends are thinking he staged a disappearance. Like Dad.”

  “Damn. An epidemic of rich pricks who’re tired of all their money. Makes about as much sense as a meth epidemic in Piute Meadows.”

  “Maybe it was post traumatic stress like you soldiers get,” he said. “What did you do in Iraq, sergeant?”

  “Did my best to keep my boys safe.”

  “Wow,” he said, insulting as hell. “What did you have to do to do that?”

  “Kill whoever wanted us dead.”

  “Did they give you your medal for that?” he asked.

  “We’re all real proud of Tommy,” Sarah said. “And we’re just glad he’s home in one piece.”

  “Then you should try to stay in one piece,” he said.

  Sarah was about to say something when Lester stumbled out of the truck.

  “This the rich choad from Florida?” he asked.

  “This gentleman thinks we have evidence about his father’s disappearance,” Sarah said.

  Gerald smiled at Lester. “Por fin,” he said, “la verdad.”

  Lester looked GQ over. GQ quit smirking. He was taller than Lester, but even as beat up as Lester was right then, he was in real good shape and flat fearless in a fistfight. GQ sensed that right off.

  “You got some unfinished business with Callie Dean,” Lester said. “You’ll be finishing it with me.”

  Gerald flicked his cigarette into the street. Then he stepped off the curb out of reach and kind of hunched his shoulders and wiggled his fingers at Lester like some old-movie witch doctor and made a spooky-lookey sort of moan. He trotted across the street laughing like a moron.

  I put my hand on Lester’s chest. “Easy, bud.”

  “Don’t forget what I said, deputy,” GQ hollered back.

  Sarah just watched him go. “He’d be a pretty goodlooking guy,” she said, “if he didn’t slump so much.”

  Lester looked at her like he couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not. “I’m going to get a ham-and-cheese and a beer,” he said. “You guys want something?”

  “We’re good,” Sarah said quick, like she wanted him to just go.

  We watched Lester walk down the sidewalk to the bakery. Across the street GQ opened the door of a white Mercedes with Nevada plates and took out a little manpurse. He took off his hat and left it on the seat, then he walked to the front of the Mansion House hotel. There was a new Range Rover with California plates parked just behind the Mercedes. Three guys waited for him on the sidewalk, not Cubans but rich-looking old white guys. GQ handed the car keys to one of them, and they went inside the hotel. Sarah just stared like she was sorting it all out.

  “So what the heck was that all about?” Sarah asked.

  “He was the one had Callie run off the road.”

  “I guessed that much,” she said. She reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me. It was Callie’s note to Lester and me about driving to meet GQ at State Line. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “Weren’t saying you were.” I folded the note and handed it back. I looked across the street. We could see GQ and his pals sitting at a window table in the dining room looking at menus. “Who the hell are those guys?”

  “Friends of Gerald’s father from the Flying W aviation club,” she said. “One’s a big real-estate guy from L.A. They were in the office first thing this morning stinking of money.” She got one of her why-do-I-put-up-with-this bureaucratic-crap looks. “Mitch had a meeting of the officers on duty and told us to extend them every courtesy. They said they’re starting up the search again, this time further west where nobody looked before.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. This quadrangle.”

  “When?”

  “Couple of days,” she said. “Why so interested?”

  “Just curious. Maybe they think Albert gave them a new lead.”

  “I guess so,” she said. “Or Callie. Since she’s been calling the family’s lawyers, they’ve been calling me. All about that plane. So why was she going to meet him?”

  “You read the note. She didn’t say.”

  “But she told you what she was up to,” she said.

  “Only that she wanted to shake some money from that family. I told her it was a bad idea.”

  She just stared at me like she didn’t much believe me.

  “So now old Gerald is surrounded by his own kind, all rich and connected.”

  “What I don’t know is why,” she said.

  “Money talks.”

  “More than I can say for you,” she said. “Whatever she was up to, you don’t need to cover for Callie anymore.”

  I just nodded.

  “I’m cutting you a lot of slack,” she said, “in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I noticed. How come?”

  “Because the quieter you get, the more you worry me.”

  “I just want to backtrack Callie and make sure Lester’s out of whatever nonsense she was scheming.”

  “You’ll tell me what you know sooner than later.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Stay away from this guy in the meantime. I don’t like that he’s checked out your record.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” she said. “What?”

  “What was it he told you not to forget?”

  “I was trying to see if he’d let his guard down,” she said. “He started bragging about his expensive toys.” She got flummoxed. “Female and otherwise. He said he wanted to see me in a thong on his cigarette boat.”

  “Hell, Sarah. Isn’t a male in this county over twelve wouldn’t pay to see that.”

  “What is that, exactly?” She tried to sound all serious and law-enforcement-y.

  “Itty-bitty underpants that run up the crack of your butt, I guess.”

  She punched me hard on the arm. “A cigarette boat, you jerk.”

  I rubbed my arm. She was embarrassed as hell.

  “You just be careful, Tommy,” she said. “I don’t know what he thinks you did, but he means you harm.”

  “I’ll sleep with one eye open.”

  “You never sleep,” she said. “That’s your problem.”<
br />
  She grabbed my sore arm and marched me across the street and around the corner toward the Mark Twain Café like I was under arrest. We could see GQ and his friends watching us through the window of the hotel. Inside the Mark Twain, we sat down and she bought me my second breakfast that morning. I was wondering how much to tell her, when she had to run off halfway through her Belgian waffle because Lester tracked us down and said that Mitch was looking for her. Fishermen had just found the nude body of some Mexican girl snagged in the willows below the dam.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lester sat down and watched me eat. He cleaned up Sarah’s waffle and went to the can twice in the time it took me to finish. When we got up to leave I thought I saw the black Escalade cruise by, but it disappeared behind the Masonic Lodge before I got a good look. We walked back down Main Street and crossed over to my pickup. The tow truck had hauled the Firebird around the corner out of traffic and left it on the side street where Albert’s relatives could pick it up. We stood on the concrete in front of the garage for a bit, Lester talking to old man Dunbar, me just looking at the hotel across the street.

  I asked Lester to buy some things we’d need for the Boy Scout trip like nylon stuff sacks, matches, batteries, another box of .270 soft points and such. He didn’t see what the hurry was but I made him a list. A week ahead was always pretty abstract for him. We walked past the Sierra Peaks, but he couldn’t even look inside so I guessed we’d be taking our dinner trade to the Hunter’s Lodge for a while. Lester kept on toward the sporting goods while I dropped in to the general store to pick up a few camp things that May didn’t send up with the groceries like a hard salami, some cheese, Copenhagen that Lester had asked for, half a dozen hacksaw blades, a can of liquid wrench, and a bottle of Crown Royal.

  When I stepped out of the store, I saw GQ a block away leaning against my truck. He saw me and started walking my direction. I waited outside the sporting goods by the sidewalk freezer with the trophy-sized Rainbows. When he caught up with me he lit a Camel Filter and smiled at me from behind his shades. He looked like he’d had a pretty good lunch.

  “You could use a new truck, cowboy,” he said.

  “It’s paid for.”

  “You could have a lot nicer one paid for,” he said. “You could have a hundred of them, claro?” He smoked like a stoner sucking on a joint. We both watched Lester through the window drifting through the stacks of camping and fishing stuff. I didn’t want him thinking about a soft target like Lester too much. I walked in the other direction and set my paper bag at the foot of the iron fence by the courthouse lawn. He followed right along.

  “That’s what you want, right,” he said, “money?”

  “You got no idea what I want.”

  He made his spooky-lookey noise again, kind of an eeeuuuww sound. I wanted to deck him.

  “I figure that’s why you and the sidekick haven’t told anybody about Dad’s plane.” He laughed and wagged his finger and sounded real Ricky Ricardo. “You boys are up to something. I can tell.”

  I just let him talk.

  “His girl Callie wanted money,” he said. “She sounded like she would’ve done about anything to get it, too.”

  “You’re lucky Lester don’t hear you talking that way.

  You’d be picking your teeth off the concrete.”

  “My boy Teófilo was close enough to him last night,” he said, “to cut his throat in his sleep.”

  “So why didn’t he?”

  “’Cause you’re the brains of the outfit, my friend.” He reached over and touched the elbow of my dirty shirt just like Sarah had. “I hate to tell you, but your laundry detergent just ain’t cutting it.”

  We both leaned our backs against the fence staring up at the mountains like tourists. I looked down the sidewalk and saw Lester step out of the sporting goods.

  “You tell me what works for you,” he said. “You can fly with one of the search teams.” He damn near giggled. “Be like doing recon back in Iraq for you.”

  “I didn’t do recon.”

  “We’re gonna start in two days,” he said. “You and I can get to know each other.”

  “Way your Cubans are going, you and I’ll both be dead in two days.” I picked up my grocery bag and followed Lester down the sidewalk to the Dodge. When I got to the truck, I looked back. GQ finally quit staring and pushed himself off the fence and sauntered out into the street.

  Lester watched him trot to the opposite sidewalk then head back toward the hotel. He reached into my grocery bag and pulled out the snuff tin.

  “What’d the rich boy want?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You see that watch he had?”

  “Yeah. I saw the damn watch, Lester.”

  I got into the truck, and we drove back to the pack station.

  After I’d put on some clean clothes, we dragged a pile of equipment from the tack trailer and laid it out in full outfits on the pack platforms. Sawbucks, saddle pads, cinches and lashropes, panniers or slings, and canvas tarps. I had Lester inventory every piece so we could fix what needed fixing. The platforms were just rough planks out in the sun, so it was hot work shaking out the dust and mouse turds, finding the bags that needed patching and the straps that needed mending. Harvey always bought good equipment, but he had been packing since the world was young, so a lot of his stuff was pretty beat up. Nothing had been touched since last fall, and it didn’t look like anything had been mended or oiled since I’d left. Lester cut strips from a piece of latigo-tanned hide for billets and straps, and we punched holes and riveted leather until the sawbucks were all rigged tight as new. I had to pirate a couple of cinches from pack saddles still in the trailer to replace frayed ones so we wouldn’t have any sore bellies at ten thousand feet. I made a list for Harvey, so he could order replacement gear. Somebody had got careless last deer season and left grain in a pretty new bag, and mice had chewed clean through the canvas. I stitched in a latigo patch so the bag would hold a load of bricks.

  I kept Lester humming along past noon until we had four full outfits ready to go. Then, Lester being Lester, he was ready to move on to something else.

  “I think the rest of this can wait till tomorrow, pard,” he said. “Let’s grab some lunch and get out of the sun.”

  We were both sweating, hats on the back of our heads.

  “We got other things to do tomorrow, bud.”

  “What other things?”

  “Things.”

  I rustled us some sandwiches and iced tea, and I kept him at it. An afternoon breeze came up and we got some shade out on the platforms and kept on working until we had six outfits spread out and ready to pack.

  Lester stood up and shook himself like a dog. “Should I hang ’em all back inside the shed?”

  “No. Let’s leave ’em. Just cover each rig with a tarp, then they’ll be ready for Harvey to take up to Power Line Creek. That way we won’t have to sort ’em twice.”

  “You know Harv,” he said. “He’ll just throw ’em in a jumble in the truckbed, and we’ll have to root through it next week at four in the damn morning.”

  He sat on the edge of the platform and ate his sandwich watching the horses in the corral and the sun on the pasture, looking out to the tamarack along the creek with the breeze fluttering the aspen leaves overhead. In the summer that pack station is about as nice a place as there is in that country. He watched me snag a halter and walk into the corral. I slipped a rope over the neck of one of the big packhorses and checked his new shoes all around. Then I caught up another and checked him. I could see Lester off in the shade, taking a pinch of Copenhagen as he wondered what the hell I was up to. I checked six or eight horses and mules, then looked over our two best saddle horses and checked them too. Lester walked up to the fence when I was picking up the feet of Harvey’s big, rangey Quarter mare that Lester usually rode.

  “Figure they’d fallen off in two days?” he said.

  “Albert was the one of us who actually
liked nailing on iron.”

  “We’re surely gonna miss old Albert,” he said, “in about six weeks.”

  “We’ll get by.”

  “Hey,” he said, “what did the Florida fruitbat want? You never said.”

  I straightened up and let the mare loose. “He wanted to give us money.”

  “I knew it,” he said. “I knew it. Damn, Callie was right.”

  “He’s not giving us squat.” I opened the gate, and we stood there next to Harvey’s anvil stump.

  “Then why the hell’s he offering? Jesus, Tommy, just admit Callie was right.”

  “Callie wasn’t right. Now because of her this whole deal is upside down.”

  “So you’re not even going to hear what the man has to say?” Lester was getting tense.

  “I already heard what the man has to say.”

  “We should go see him,” Lester said. “Tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.”

  “You’re going to stay away from that boy, Lester. Like Callie shoulda.”

  That got him. He was boiling and in my face.

  “That guy is our payday.” He was yelling now.

  “There is no payday. Jesus, Lester, that kind of thinking is what got Callie killed.”

  He hit me and I went down. He was always quicker than me anyway. I lay back on an elbow and felt around my cheekbone to see if it needed rearranging. My hat was lying in the dirt.

  “I don’t want to fight you, Lester.”

  “Then watch what you say, goddamnit,” he said. “Watch what you goddamn say.” He just stood over me, shouting wild-like, ready to take me out when I got up.

  “One more time. No payday. No deal. For ten or twenty mil, you don’t think that bastard would cap us on the courthouse lawn in front of the whole town? He killed Callie, bud. Had her run off the road.” I rolled over till I could grab the anvil horn and pull myself up. Lester crowded me, ready to swing again. I sat on the anvil. Man, was I clocked. I forgot how hard that boy could hit.

  He stood over me still on the fight, snorting through his nose like a horse. “You think dying was her fault.”

  I didn’t answer that.

  “Shit,” he said. He was thinking about her being lost to him. “Shit.” He picked up my hat and threw it at me, then walked off so I couldn’t see his face.