“No way,” Billy said.
“Way. Do a little outside reading. You might just learn something. But okay, second, you need to know to know where you’re going to fight this war. Again, Afghanistan is just the beginning. What about Libya, Somalia, Syria? What about the IRA—are they terrorists? Do we attack Ireland? What about some of our own activities in Latin America? A lot of people consider us terrorists.”
“What’s the third thing?” Billy asked.
“You need to be able to define success or failure. This is the trickiest one. How do you know if you’ve beaten terrorism? When they stop attacking us?”
“I guess you got a point there, Ken.”
“Damn right I have a point. You launch a military operation without answering those three questions, all you’re really doing is swinging your dick. Now, we may be good at swinging our dick, but this time people are going to die with every swing. We need to be a little careful.”
“Which comes back around to me checking out the crop dusters,” Billy observed. Proving once again that he’s smarter than I usually gave him credit for, Ken thought.
“That’s right. You go out and have a look. It’s not a bad idea. But don’t go arresting or accusing anybody before you check with me.”
“Got it, Ken.”
“Okay, Billy. I’m going back up to the Slab, see what more I can come up with on our dead lady. I’ll see you later on.”
Billy replaced his hat, touched the brim in salute, and walked out.
***
Lucy knew that a twenty-minute head start was virtually meaningless when comparing the speed she could travel through the desert on platform-soled sandals with that of men in real hiking boots, carrying water. So she did the best she could to increase her lead. Initially, she took her sandals off, knowing that she would be able to move faster barefoot, and also knowing that her feet would cut and bleed fairly quickly. Convinced that she was leaving obvious footprints, she tore some strips from her shirt and bound the wounds on her feet, then backtracked down the path she had taken and chose a different route. Her hope was that they’d follow the bloody prints down a canyon she had no intention of taking, and when the footprints stopped they’d continue on that path.
That bit of misinformation planted, she put the sandals back on and scrambled over a series of sandstone boulders. She had no idea where she was, except that the desert was Mojave, not the Sonoran to which she was accustomed. The same creosote bushes were omnipresent, but there were Joshua trees, which didn’t grow at home, and other yuccas with which she wasn’t familiar. Which put her north of home, probably by a couple of hours, given the length of the car ride. Spying a range of low mountains to the south, she headed for those. She’d be thirsty soon enough, and if there was water to be found anywhere, it’d be among the hills.
Lucy worked as a file clerk in an insurance office up in Coachella, where she had to know the alphabet but not necessarily the ins and outs of risk versus benefit calculations. But she heard those terms bandied about, and understood the basic concepts. She knew enough to know that, while just being out in the desert by herself was dangerous, the risk of letting those guys catch her was pretty much identical to the risk of doing it without water. Both would be equally fatal.
Coming down from the rocks, she found a narrow canyon heading in the right direction, so she allowed herself the luxury of moving along its relatively smooth, soft floor for a while. She left footprints in the sand, but she made good time and counted on having thrown off her pursuers for long enough.
As the sun rose higher and began to beat down between the canyon walls, she started to wonder if this had been a good idea. The walls rose higher and higher, effectively trapping her there, and the air inside the canyon seemed superheated, bouncing off the sandy floor and the slick walls like microwaves in an oven. She had to slow to a walk or risk heatstroke. But she was committed now, so she continued, the canyon’s smooth walls coming closer and closer together until it was a slot canyon. Extending her arms, Lucy’s fingertips could touch both sides at once. The advantage was that as the canyon narrowed to the extreme, the upper lip overhung the floor and blocked some of the sun. Now it was like a furnace, but not a furnace with a huge ball of flaming gas attached.
Finally, the two walls met, creating a barrier about waist-high. Lucy didn’t hesitate, but pressed her palms against the edge and hoisted herself up and into the next, slightly more elevated branch of the slot canyon. She repeated the process twice more; it was like a boat working through a canal by shunting from lock to lock.
With each rise, the canyon got narrower—but, as she was counting on, the top edge of the wall grew closer as well. At the point where she needed to turn sideways and edge through the canyon, the lip of the wall was less than ten feet above her. Time to go up. Her back against one wall and feet on the opposite, she pushed herself up to the top of the wall. Breaking out into the sun again, she learned that she had made real progress toward the hills, and that the other side of the canyon was a gentle slope that ended at a broad Joshua trees forest. She left the canyon behind and struck out across the plain, its floor shimmering in the day’s heat and casting mirage greenery several feet above the actual brush. The hills were close enough now to make out details.
Forty minutes or so later, Lucy guessed, she reached the hills. Every step now was agony. The skin on her arms and face was burned. She knew she needed water soon—she was dehydrated, and heatstroke would follow soon if she couldn’t get water and some shade.
But from halfway across the plain she’d seen a dark streak on a cliff wall, and now, closer, she could see a leafy green plant at the base of the cliff, and she knew what that meant. She pointed herself at that spot, and a few minutes later she was there, in front of a tall sandstone face with a narrow black mark running down it from a point midway up. A spring. She couldn’t even see the water, just where it had discolored the stone over the years. But it was there, nonetheless. She pressed her mouth to the stone and held it there, letting the moisture seep into her. Not nearly as satisfying as a mouthful of water, or the long drink she craved, but it would be enough to save her life, she knew.
If she could continue to evade the men who chased her.
And that didn’t look good, because when she pulled her mouth away from the wall—holding her hand there to catch what water she could—and looked back over the plain she had just crossed, she saw several figures, following her path. She had bought herself some time but she hadn’t lost them. Which just meant things would be harder from here out—she was weak, tired, hungry, burned, and used up. They were maybe not much fresher, but they had the right clothes and gear.
And guns.
Lucy turned and pressed her face to the cliff again. She’d need to find a better source of water than this soon, but at least it was something. She stayed as long as she dared and then left the cliff wall, following it around until it opened into a wide, rocky canyon.
She scouted the canyon for a few minutes, always aware that the hunters were less than a half hour behind her. Running away was looking less and less like a possibility, which left her only two options. Giving up seemed like a bad choice.
So, to be honest, did making a stand.
But if she was going to die, then she’d by God do everything she could to take some of those men with her.
Exploring the canyon, though, gave her a glimmer of hope.
A side canyon branched off this main one, its entrance blending so well with the main canyon’s wall as to be virtually invisible unless one were walking the canyon’s edge as Lucy had done, looking for precisely this kind of thing. The narrow side canyon led uphill, and its walls were a dozen feet or so tall, and climbable, with plenty of hand and footholds. Lucy scaled one to see what was on the other side and spotted an inset in the canyon wall—an indentation big enough for a person, if she was small enough and maybe a little flexible.
She poked her head inside, looking for snakes or scorpions, b
ut it was clear. And shaded by the overhang. She climbed inside, fitting herself into the indentation’s natural curve. Pluses and minuses, she knew. If they climbed the canyon wall in the same place she did, they’d spot her, and she’d have nowhere to hide or run. Her back was, quite literally, to the wall.
But if they didn’t climb the wall, they’d never see her. They’d go up the main canyon, or maybe even up the side canyon, but the only place from which they could see into this indentation was from up on the opposite wall of the side canyon itself, and what were the chances they’d be up there when the canyon floor was easier walking?
With a few minutes to spare, Lucy climbed back down and went out into the canyon to make a few more adjustments. Stepping as firmly as she could bear to, she made a trail of deep footprints leading up the main canyon a ways, ending at a rocky patch where sandaled feet wouldn’t leave marks anyway. Then she backtracked, walking backward, stepping in her own footprints. Finally, she cut over to the side canyon, using a fallen branch of greasewood to brush away the footprints she made. Her hope was that they’d believe the obvious footprints and go straight up the main canyon, leading them far away from her. In the meantime, she’d be inside her hidey-hole, in the shade, waiting for them to clear out so she could get back to the important business of finding water and food.
She worked her way back up-canyon and was starting to climb when she heard them behind her, entering the main canyon. If her camouflage didn’t work, they’d spot the side canyon within minutes, and see her before she got back to the indentation. Climbing all the way to that would leave her visible for too long, so instead she picked a flat shelf of rock, lower than she was comfortable with but well above the head of any of the men, and flattened herself against it, waiting to see which way they’d go.
***
Carter Haynes had to shove a pile of newspapers—the most recent seemed to be from late 1998—over to one side of the chair he was offered in the semi-random collection of debris that was Gray Boonton’s little piece of the Slab. Where most of the locals at least had something resembling a mobile home, Gray had connected sheets of cast-off corrugated sheet metal, possibly with chewing gum and kite string, and added cardboard, plywood, and other artifacts (the hood of a Ford Fairlane, for instance, had become a front door). There were mushrooms, for God’s sake, growing up through a scrap of cheap remnant carpeting that covered the broken cement slab and served as a floor; broad-headed, red-spotted things with a fine red tracery connecting the spots. Sandra, Carter’s wife, would probably have his clothes sterilized if she saw this place. She was a clean freak, which didn’t bother Carter as long as she dealt with her neuroses while he was away from the condo. And there was something to be said for coming back to a neat home every night.
Despite the crushing heat inside the place, Boonton wore a moth-eaten cardigan sweater the color of his name over a one-piece orange polyester jumpsuit, open to the navel. Sweat gleamed across his chest and the exposed swell of his belly. Giving Boonton two grand for this mess was absurd—it would probably cost nearly that to haul it all to a dump, and if he’d spent a penny on it Carter would be surprised. But a deal was a deal, and if Boonton would sign the contract, he’d get the dough, same as anybody else on the Slab. It was worth it to Carter to avoid the bad publicity that might come from forcible evictions. Not to mention the possibility that any of these people could come back with a can of gasoline and a match if they weren’t treated with what passed for respect.
He was perilously close to losing his cool with Boonton, though.
The old man turned the contract this way and that, upside down and over, as if he not only couldn’t read but didn’t actually understand that the side with the words on it was the side that mattered. “All I got to do is sign this paper and you give me the money?” he asked, for what must have been the thirtieth time.
“That’s right. You sign that and then you move off the Slab.”
“Why do I got to move?”
Carter bit his lip. Behind him, he could tell Nick Postak was working hard to keep from cracking up—he could hear his bodyguard’s breathing catch and hold as he made a supreme effort.
Gray Boonton was a hundred and fifty if he was a day, Carter thought, and resembled nothing so much as an older version of Professor Irwin Corey. The man still had a wild shock of long hair, lots of it for someone who should have been dead decades past. His chin and cheeks were grizzled and white, and his teeth sat abandoned in an empty glass on top of an upside down tortoise shell that rested on a broken-slatted fruit crate turned on end to function as—well, apparently as a base for the turtle shell, Carter decided. Unless the shell and crate were both meant to be part of a pedestal for the teeth. Hard to tell, really.
“Because that’s the whole point,” Carter reminded him. “We’re building houses here.”
“Well, as soon as you start to build on this spot, why then I’ll move,” Boonton said. He sounded totally convinced of his own reasonableness.
“No, you need to move right away. Everybody else is.”
“They are?” Boonton asked. “Why?”
“Because that’s the deal. They agree to move, they get the money. Then they can use the money to pay for the move.”
“Two thousand dollars?” The man had a lock on that particular figure, if nothing else.
“That’s right.”
“Can I buy one of these new houses for that?”
“No,” Carter replied. “I’m afraid not. Not even close.”
“Well, then what good does it do me? I ain’t got any other money.”
“I don’t care where you move to,” Carter said. “As long as it’s ten miles or more from the Slab.”
“You going to give me a ruler?”
“With two grand you can buy a whole yardstick.”
Boonton sprang to his feet from the old truck bench he’d been using as a chair and began rummaging around on a card table. One leg was broken off and that corner wedged between the slats of a kitchen chair, keeping it somewhere in the general vicinity of level. Watching him dig through the detritus of his life, Carter had the sense that Boonton was an impersonation of a man, maybe a bunch of squirrels in a human suit trying to pass.
“So…” Boonton muttered, seemingly to himself, “…so, two thousand dollars for me. But that won’t buy me one of your fine houses. But if you have money for me in that case, maybe you have money for everybody else, hey? Hey?”
The last word came out louder, almost shouted. With it, Boonton drew a long, wicked-looking knife from underneath the piles of crap on his slanted card table. It looked like a fish-scaling knife with a rusted, serrated blade. He pointed it at Carter.
“Just hand that suitcase over here, you,” he said. “Let me see all that pretty money inside.”
Nick Postak was already in motion. Having decided the old man wasn’t a significant enough threat to use the gun on, Carter guessed, he planted himself between Boonton and Carter and grabbed the wrist of Boonton’s knife hand. His bulk blocked the next move, but Carter heard the crack of bone and Boonton’s scream. Nick’s left arm shot out in a jab, and Boonton flew backward, crashing into his barely-balanced card table and upending the whole thing. Boonton flipped over the table as it fell, paper and animal bones and aluminum cans and bottles and broken appliances flew through the room as if catapulted. Carter ducked as a green beer bottle jetted past his head, slipping somehow through the barricade that Nick’s body provided.
He looked up again to see Gray Boonton, still in motion, seeming to cartwheel over the card table into the rear wall of his dwelling. Into, and through—as Boonton slammed into the rickety structure, the wall gave way behind him. The old man, arms and legs flailing, burst through into the bright sunshine on the other side. As the corrugated tin wall hit the cement of the Slab, the rest of the makeshift cabin shuddered as if an earthquake were striking it. Carter Haynes bolted from his seat for the Fairlane hood door, shoving it aside and running away from
Boonton’s collapsing home. Nick Postak followed, his gun clenched in his meaty fist now.
As he and Carter stood there, catching their breaths, the little shack fell in on itself with a rumble and a cloud of dust.
On the other side, Gray Boonton knelt on the Slab, shaking a fist at them. “You broke my God-damned house, you bastards! You owe me a lot more than two thousand dollars now, by God!”
Nick looked at Carter. “I could just shoot him.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Carter said. He looked past Gray, where a familiar figure came toward them at a trot. “But I’d advise against it. That’s the local law.”
Ken Butler came up behind Boonton, still screaming bloody murder over the collapse of his house of cards. Half a dozen mangy-looking mongrels converged from different points of the Slab, barking and sniffing at the wreckage. “You gentlemen having a disagreement of some kind?” Butler asked.
“They knocked down my house,” Boonton insisted. “And that big fucker hit me!”
“This is Nick Postak, my bodyguard,” Carter explained quickly. “He did strike Mr. Boonton, after Boonton pulled a knife on me and tried to steal my briefcase.”
“I see,” Butler said. “And you have a concealed carry permit for that weapon, Mr. Postak?”
“I sure do, Lieutenant,” Nick said. “I can show it to you.”
“Not just yet, please. That true, Gray? You tried to get the man’s briefcase?”
“He’s trying to give me two thousand bucks,” Boonton said. “But he’s got a lot more than that in the case. Figure I need it more than he does if I got to find a new place to live.”
Butler did a chuckle that reminded Carter once again of Andy Griffith. “Looks like you need one anyway,” he said. “I’m going to make a suggestion, gentlemen. I’m going to suggest that no one presses charges for any of the variety of criminal acts that may have occurred here, because I just don’t think a judge or jury will be able to keep a straight face long enough to hear the facts. Mr. Haynes, I recommend you wrap it up for today and continue again tomorrow. Further, Gray, I’m going to suggest that you sign Mr. Haynes’s contract, and take the two thousand dollars, and move off the Slab right away.”
The Slab Page 14
