Eddie sagged. The defiance had seeped out, leaving a small brown body and a face made haggard by smoke, booze, and anger. Frank put a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. For a moment, he was consumed with compassion. The ghost of his mother whispered in his mind, There but for the grace of God … “I’ll put in a good word. You can count on it.”
Eddie shook his head in resignation. “Shit, there goes the ten thousand dollars. He was going to pay me ten thousand dollars, Frank. Man, I could’ve done a lot with ten thousand dollars.”
“You see any of the money yet?”
“Nope, but he was bringing it with him. He was going to give it to me after we got the head.”
“After you get the head?” Frank’s pulse quickened. “Let me get this straight. Smith’s coming back?”
Eddie stroked the cat’s back, and Prowler arched and turned with pleasure. “Yeah, he called and wanted me to go with him and help him get the head. I told him that wasn’t part of the deal. Told him that I didn’t know who else was in the canyon, but that Fish and Game would know about the dead sheep soon enough and that going back up in the canyon was a good way to get caught. Then he says there’s nothing to be afraid of and that if I don’t help him, no money. No head, no money. Then he offered me another five thousand just to help out. Take it or forget it. It was going to be fifteen thousand or nothing, so I told him I’d do it.”
“When was all this going to take place?”
“Don’t know. He was going to call me this afternoon.” Eddie mimicked Smith. “‘At exactly four o’clock. Be sure you’re there, because my schedule is tight.’ I tell you what’s tight. His asshole, that’s what’s tight.” He lowered his voice, sounding thoughtful, looking at Frank. “But you can bet he’ll call. He wants that head. I can see why. It’s the biggest set of horns I’ve ever seen.”
Frank felt his compassion harden. “I know that, Eddie. I’ve been watching that ram for a couple of years. Now his head is rotting in an abandoned mine, and the other ram, killed for no good reason, left to rot on the ground. Not a good day’s work.”
The small man looked down at his dusty feet. All the bravado gone, just a guy in his shop with his cat on a hot September afternoon. All that was missing was the cold beer. Frank sighed. He wished there were a way to get Eddie out of it, but there wasn’t. This was the best he could do. He could feel the warm sunlight on his arm and the side of his face. Prowler closed his eyes in contentment. Frank pulled at the tip of his nose. If Eddie helped, Smith could be caught red-handed. After he turned himself in, Fish and Game would be all over him about Smith, and they’d be out of luck, unless something could be set up, catch Smith with the goods—head, rifle—enough to make it airtight.
“Eddie, I’ve got an idea. You’ll be here to take Smith’s call. He’ll want to set up some sort of meeting. Go for it.”
“What’s the point if I’m going to be in jail?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Here’s the deal. If we could catch him with the head and the rifle, catch him when he comes back to the mine, then he’s the dummy, Eddie. He’ll do time.” Frank thought about Donnie Miller’s sunbaked corpse. “Maybe a lot of time.”
“Who’s going to take him back to the canyon?”
“Maybe you, maybe me.” He was thinking out loud. “Maybe you could have sprained your back, hurt yourself somehow, and your cousin from the reservation is filling in.”
Eddie shook his head. “I don’t think so, Frank. He’s a very suspicious guy. When we started up the canyon in the truck, he asked me about how many times I had done this. Wanted to know if I’d ever been caught or been in jail. He kept looking around all the time. And like I told you, as soon as he knew someone else was in the canyon, man he was nervous, but not scared; cool, you know, moving fast but cool.
“He says, ‘What’s the best way out?’ So I told him about hiking out by Telescope Peak. Then he says, ‘What about the head?’ So I told him to stash it. Then he looks at me and says, ‘Don’t get caught. It’s better if you don’t get caught.’ He had mean eyes when he said that. Like if I get caught, I get more trouble from him.” He looked at Frank and shook his head again. “Naw, I don’t think he’ll go for it.”
Probably not, Frank thought. Then what? The two of them stood there in the afternoon sun, thinking about what to do. Frank felt the pressure of time. He had to go take a look at the mischief in Jawbone Canyon and see if he could get a handle on it. And he wanted to run down Mitch Cooper, see what else he knew about the Miller brothers and company. The thought of them produced a knot of anxiety. It was the look on Mitch’s face. There had been real fear there, almost shock, and Mitch didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was squeamish.
“Tell you what, Eddie. I’ll wait here until you take the call. Just go along with him. Don’t say anything to make him suspicious. Then we’ll work something out.” He looked at his watch: 1:45. “You had lunch yet?”
Eddie brightened. “You want, I’ll make some sandwiches.”
“Sounds good. Got any cold ones?” It was out of his mouth before he really thought about it.
Eddie shook his head. “Naw, drank the last one this morning to chase away the headache.”
“Okay, you fix sandwiches, and I’ll get the beer.”
Bologna on white bread. Frank wasn’t at all sure about the mayonnaise, but Eddie served them up on paper plates, along with some stale Pringles. Frank had used Pringles to start fires with—straight grease. His stomach roiled. A couple of Coronas helped wash it down. He hoped it would stay down. Eddie was happy as a kid, delighted to be entertaining company, really into outsmarting Smith. The sandwiches—Eddie had eaten three—apparently had no effect on his stomach. He rattled on, his voice becoming background noise. Frank felt like nodding off, but his stomach said no. He hovered in the twilight zone. No dinner tonight. Stomach wouldn’t take it, and he didn’t need it. It had been 3:30 by the time they finished up, and he had a long way to drive, at least a couple hours in his truck, holding it at sixty. His chosen chariot was sure, but definitely not speedy. He glanced at his watch: almost four o’clock. His lids felt heavy.
He awoke with Eddie poking his shoulder. The phone was ringing. Frank cleared his head. He pointed at the phone, motioning for Eddie to answer it. “Let him do most of the talking.”
Eddie picked up the phone. “Yeah, hello.” He nodded. “Yeah, sure.” He looked over at Frank and winked, nodding his head. “Um-hm. Sure. That sounds okay.” There was a long pause while Frank watched Eddie’s head bob up and down. “Yeah, that should work good. No problem.”
Frank handed him a piece of paper and a blunt pencil he’d picked up from the floor near the phone. Eddie shook his head and looked away. “What’d you say?” His back was to Frank, shoulders taut with concentration. “Yeah, I got it, about six o’clock.” He turned back to face Frank, still nodding his head. Frank briefly wondered why people nodded or shook their heads when talking on the phone. Who could see?
“Right.” Eddie had put on the street-smart voice. He was even standing with a swagger. “It’s a done deal. See you at six.”
Eddie hung up the phone. Frank retrieved the paper and pencil and waited for Eddie to speak.
“So I’m supposed to meet him at Ballarat Sunday morning. He’s driving a car this time. Let’s see, he wants me to bring canteens and a packboard.”
“Uh-huh. How’s he want to do it, get the head out?”
“He wants to leave his car at the mouth of the canyon. He liked the way I hid the truck.” Eddie looked pleased with himself. “So we’re going to hide the car same way I did my truck. Then I’m supposed to take him up to Mahogany Flat, and he’s hiking down the canyon, picking up the head on the way down, no uphill hiking.”
“How’d you traverse the rocks when you went up?”
“With all the gear, we took the long way. The trail up around the left of the slide.”
Frank gave it some thought. “Yeah, and that’s the way he’ll come down.” He smiled
at Eddie. “Guess you fooled Mr. Big Shot, right? He’s going to be caught. Fish and Game’s bound to consider this when the time comes to press charges. First thing Saturday, go on over to the AM/PM for the morning paper. When you see your picture, call Fish and Game.”
Eddie picked at his ear, not saying anything. Frank waited. “You won’t forget about Prowler?”
“Nope. You show me where his stuff is.”
“I’m shutting him in the shop. Someone hit him with a pellet gun awhile back.” Eddie ran his hand along the cat’s shoulder and upper forearm. “He’s okay now, but I don’t want anything to happen to him. Maybe you could come on Saturday, check his water and stuff. Make sure he doesn’t find a way out. He gets pissed when I leave him alone too long.”
“He’ll be okay. That’s a promise.” The cat would be okay. He just hoped that things didn’t get too tough for Eddie. Seemed like the law landed harder on the little guys than the big ones.
“Oh, and Eddie, leave the keys to your truck. I might have to borrow it for a bit. Okay?”
Eddie grinned, bad teeth exposed in unconscious pleasure. “You’re going to be the surprise up in Surprise Canyon, huh, Frank?”
“We’ll see. Probably won’t be me, be some agent from Fish and Game.”
“Uh-huh,” Eddie said, still grinning like a kid, but with really bad teeth.
16
Frank pulled off Highway 14 where the Jawbone Canyon Road tailed away into the Tehachapi Mountains, well below Walker Pass and the junction with 395. The Los Angeles Aqueduct, a euphemism for the Owens River in a pipe, snaked across the mountains and desert until the river reemerged in a spectacular cascade in the San Fernando Valley, where Interstate 5 rose into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The diverted water filled the swimming pools and watered the lawns of the endless suburbs that comprised Southern California, leaving the Owens Valley more or less closed to agriculture and development, although things were changing.
Frank considered the theft of the valley’s water a blessing in disguise. He could imagine what the floor of the Owens Valley would be like if the city of Los Angeles hadn’t acquired the water rights: wall-to-wall burbs.
Rainfall was negligible in Jawbone and vegetation sparse; mostly creosote bush, rabbit bush, burro bush, and brittlebush, not enough rain for Joshua trees—dry, dry, country. When the rain came, it brought flowers in profusion, carpets of lupine and poppies. The brittlebush became bright with crowns of yellow blooms and the great bouquet perfumed the canyon air. All gone in a week or two; ephemeral was an apt tag for these fleeting moments of color. But they were achingly beautiful, maybe made more so by their brief duration, like the butterflies that appeared from nowhere to tend the blossoms.
Farther up the canyon, the road turned into an ever-widening track, encroaching on the sandy floor. In places, the road grew to be more than fifty yards across, six or seven inches deep in sand and dust, the result of thousands of knobby tires chewing up the dirt on the weekends. A couple of fifty-gallon drums overflowed with trash in a vain attempt to contain the accumulated mess of weekend recreation. The canyon floor was littered with bits of paper and plastic blowing about in the wind. Frank felt a sense of helplessness. The canyon was being defaced. Everywhere, the ATVs and motorcycles had cut trails into the hills, scars on the land.
It wasn’t yet nine, but he was thinking about breakfast. Some huevos rancheros and a couple of Dos Equis would really hit the spot. Take off the rough edges and push back the sadness. He was rescued from the shadows of introspection by the sight of a boxcar-size motor home stopped crosswise in the wash. He could make out the figure of a woman waving at him with something white in her hand. It looked like the driver had attempted to cross over the wash and pick up the road that led to Dove Springs and eventually to Walker Pass, a long haul. The sight of the motor home bogged down in the sand produced a sense of nasty satisfaction and then irritation. He’d have to help.
A woman in a pale blue print dress and a navy blue windbreaker stood near the door of the motor home, waving frantically, the wind blowing her dress immodestly up elderly legs. He followed the track across the wash, staying away from the chewed-up sand in the center, trying for the harder-packed stuff, which was not yet part of the giant ATV sandbox. He stopped his truck about fifty feet from the motor home; no four-wheel drive meant he had to be careful not to get stuck himself.
The woman didn’t stop waving until he got out of the truck. He could see her mouth moving as she tried to talk into the wind. He trudged across the wash and lifted his hand in greeting. The wind whipped at his back, pushing him on. He raised his voice to a shout. “Hello there. Looks like you’ve got some trouble.” He made himself smile. Clearly the woman was frightened. He wondered where the male contingent was. She tried to reply, her voice swallowed by the wind. He shouted to be heard. “I’m from the Bureau of Land Management. Everything okay here?”
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.” He bent forward to hear her. “No, everything’s a mess. Please come inside and look at my husband. I think he’s overdone it.”
Frank pulled the door and followed the woman back into the bedroom. A man in his mid- to late seventies lay on a queen-size bed. Everything seemed to be pink: the bedspread, the curtains, the man’s face. His T-shirt was damp from sweat and caked with dust.
“Howard, this man is a forest ranger. He’s here to help us.”
Howard began struggling to get up. Frank help up his hand. “No, sir, please stay where you are. No need to get up.” Howard flopped back on the bed, breathing heavily.
“Actually, I’m from the Bureau of Land Management.” The man and woman seemed puzzled. He gave up. “I’m a government ranger. What’s the problem here? What can I do to help?”
The man closed his eyes and sighed with relief, exhaustion, probably a combination of both. “We were going to meet some people up on the tableland near Dove Springs. Crossing over this wash here, we started bogging down. When I got out to check, both front tires were flat. I put on the spare, and while I was taking one of the dual tires off for the front, I got dizzy, so I came in to lie down for a moment.”
“That was more than two hours ago.” The woman’s face was pinched with concern.
“Well, you just stay where you are. I’ll finish the job up for you. You Auto Club, by any chance?”
“Yep, but we can’t reach ’em. The cell phone doesn’t work right down here in the canyon.”
“Well, don’t worry about it. Just take it easy. Ma’am, maybe you could show me where the tools and stuff are.” Frank looked at his watch. After nine o’clock, damn it.
Frank watched the motor home lumber down the packed dirt road with a sense of relief. It had taken him almost two hours to change the tires and extricate the motor home from the sand. It was no wonder the man was exhausted. Each wheel and tire weighed more than a hundred pounds. Frank was thankful he carried a piece of steel plate to keep the jack from burying itself, as well as sand ramps for traction, or he would’ve had to go for help. They’d be okay. They both looked fine by the time he pulled the rig back on the hard pack.
Time to get on with it. He’d try to get a lead on the caltrops he’d removed from the tires, but the effort would probably be useless. You could buy them in catalogs. Hell, you could buy almost anything from catalogs, or on the Net.
He parked his truck on the solid road above the cutbank near the turnoff for Dove Springs. Signs had been spaced down the turnoff at intervals along the side of the road, like the old Burma-Shave signs. THIS DESERT’S NOT A PLACE TO ROAM / ESPECIALLY IN A MOTOR HOME / GO BACK NOW! / IT’S NOT TOO LATE / KEEP ON COMING / MEET YOUR FATE! The last sign bore a crude drawing of a raven smoking a pipe. Where had he seen it before? A childhood memory flashed into his mind, the crows from Dumbo. That was it. “I seen a horsefly/ I seen a dragonfly/ I seen a needle that winked its eye …” He couldn’t remember the rest. The crows sang with the voices of the Ink Spots. He grinned. The old Burma-Shave sig
ns were better, but someone, or several someones, had gone to a lot of trouble to warn people off.
Up the side of a hill, another sign stuck up from the center of a rock pile: KEEP OUT. LAND OF THE JACKALOPE. Underneath the words was the figure of the pipe-smoking raven.
The jackalope thing tickled something in his memory. He gunned the truck and picked up speed for the run across the sand wash. If he didn’t slow down, he could shoot right on across. He was about halfway when the truck began slewing to the right. He shifted down and corrected, but it was useless. The sand grabbed at the wheels. He was stuck. Well, it wouldn’t be a big deal. He had the sand ramps. He grabbed the entrenching tool from behind the seat and began clearing away the sandy soil from the right front wheel, and there it was, stuck in his tire, another damn caltrops. Damn! Damn! Damn! Jackalope be damned. Jackasses, that’s what. Somebody could die of thirst out here, Frank thought, or have a heart attack, or be late for his own funeral! He threw down the entrenching tool in a fit of rage and muttered, “Shit!”
Then he caught a picture of himself stuck in the wash, jumping around like Rumpelstiltskin. It was like an out-of-body experience. He was looking down at his tiny figure in the canyon, watching it dancing about in frustration. He started to laugh. He knew Linda would laugh, that his dad was probably laughing right now, looking down from that pool hall in the sky, and that’s what did it. He saw the jackalope above the bar in the Joshua Tree Athletic Club looking down at him in lugubrious solemnity, the glass eyes winking in the light. There was Jack Collins’s Irish face winking around at everyone. Have some tamale pie. Come on over on Fridays for some fish stew. Who looked dumb now? Who was the sucker now, the fall guy? Eddie had company. He clenched his teeth, the jaw muscles working under the brown skin. Those old boys were going to get a solid piece of his mind. He didn’t have the evidence, but he could connect the dots. If he hurried, he’d just have time to pay Mitch and Shawna a visit. He thought Mitch might be holding back a few things, things that might lead to the Miller brothers. Then he was going to have a personal chat with Jack Collins and Co.
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