Desert Run

by Betty Webb

  I tried to hide my smile, but Warren saw it out of the corner of his eye and gave my knee a squeeze. A warm Arizona night, a beautiful car, a handsome man—what more could a woman want? All we needed now was to get rid of the yakky car salesman.

  But Mark was oblivious to my impatience. “Yep, and they made good neighbors, too. Never caused any trouble. Don’t know what the family would have done without them. For a while there, we Schanks ran cattle all the way from where we are now clear out to the Superstition Mountains. Course, these days, a lot of that is reservation property. You should have seen the old Schank ranch house, a big adobe built in the 1850s. It was really something. But we tore it down.”

  Being more than slightly interested in historical preservation, I spoke up. “Are you telling me your family tore down an original Territorial adobe?”

  Realizing he’d screwed up again, Mark backtracked. “Uh, it wasn’t my decision. I was only a kid when that happened. My father said it was a mess and not worth restoring. But who knows? The old place must’ve seen plenty of history. Before he died, my great-grandfather said that Wyatt Earp once spent the night there. Geronimo and his band were supposed to have camped nearby, too. Not that I know for sure if any of that’s true, you understand. One thing I’m certain of, even though it happened long before I was born. Two of those Germans from Camp Papago surrendered to my grandmother.”

  Warren’s response was as dramatic as mine. Just before the entrance to the autoplex, he pulled over to the curb and looked into the back seat. “Are you serious?”

  Mark flushed. “Well, yeah. Maybe I should have mentioned it before, but my grandparents have both been dead for years now, and Dad, who was just a kid when it happened, he’s in bad health these days and doesn’t want anything to do with the documentary. He’ll be pissed if he finds out I told you.”

  I was thrilled by the possibility of a lone woman bringing the escaped Germans to heel. Shades of Ken Follet’s Eye of the Needle, one of my favorite World War II thrillers. “Mark, was your grandmother out hunting when she ran into them?”

  He gave us a shame-faced laugh. “Hardly. The story goes that she was hanging out the wash when they walked up to her and surrendered. Dad—who was over by the barn when it happened—said they looked like hell. Cold, wet, in rags and half-starved. Grandma took them into the kitchen, fed them some macaroni and cheese and warmed them up with hot chocolate. Dad recalls those German boys as being meek as lambs, but says that Grandpa was a lot less trusting than Grandma and kept his rifle trained on them.”

  My mind raced. “Was Ernst one of the men?” Then I remembered he’d been captured by two field hands.

  Schank shook his head. “Sorry. They were just two enlisted guys. The newspapers didn’t even print their names. Now, let’s forget I brought it up, OK?”

  Warren ignored Mark’s plea for secrecy. “I want to talk to your father. It’d be great to have someone on film who actually saw two of the Germans surrender.”

  “Sorry.” But Mark’s face was a study in conflict, and I could see him weighing the chances of selling the Golden Hawk against his reluctance to provoke his father’s ire. “It won’t work. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that Dad’s in bad health. He’s suffering from emphysema and has to stay hooked up to an oxygen tank all the time. I run the business more or less by myself these days. Dad lives in Carefree and seldom leaves the house.”

  Warren was merciless. “Hey, Lena, wasn’t that ’57 Hawk a sweet-looking car?”

  I played along. “Gorgeous. Much sweeter than this ratty old ’56. Newer, too.”

  Another sigh emanated from the back seat. “OK. I’ll talk to Dad.”

  ***

  After dropping Mark off at the autoplex, where he promised to call his father before he called Japan, Warren and I headed for Cave Creek and the Horny Toad. The Hawk was the kind of car you cruised, not pushed, so although it could have easily kept up with high-speed traffic, Warren bypassed the Pima Freeway and its congestion, opting instead for Scottsdale Road. At some point, the Hawk’s original radio had been overhauled and while remaining monaural, it brought in the local Golden Oldies station clearly. One saguaro cactus after another swept past us, disappearing into the lavender twilight, while a Fifties doo-wop group harmonized on “Earth Angel.” As the sun disappeared below the horizon, emitting a final burst of color, I snuggled close to Warren, breathing in male sweat and Acqua di Gio.

  “I like this car.”

  He squeezed my knee again. “So do I. I’ve already made up my mind to buy it, but I want Mark to dangle in the wind for a while, maybe get the price down.”

  I rubbed my hand across the Golden Hawk’s silvery dash. “Why don’t they design cars like this anymore? It’s so simple and sleek.”

  “Because human beings aren’t simple and sleek any more. Life is more complex, and we all have to split ourselves off in dozens of different pieces to deal with it. Our cars reflect that. And I’m no different. Back home, I usually drive the Mercedes because I wouldn’t risk one of my classic babies on the L.A. freeways. But when I take one out for a drive along the Coast Highway, I think about the people who once drove it, the simpler time they lived in, their bedrock values. Today everything’s so unfocused. There’s no cohesive vision of what life is all about and where any of us is headed.” He paused, and his voice was uncharacteristically emotional when he continued. “To paraphrase Yeats’ poem, ‘Things are falling apart, and the center’s not holding.’”

  To an extent, I agreed with him. Through the rosy lens of Time, the past always looked better, and it was in some ways, discounting a war here and there. As we drove up Scottsdale Road past the upscale strip malls that had replaced cholla and saguaro, I tried to envision what Scottsdale had looked like at the time the Germans escaped. The tiny town was surrounded by ranches and farms then, but the artists that eventually made Scottsdale famous had already started trickling in. The big resorts were going up, too, and both the El Chorro Lodge and the Jokake Inn had begun attracting high-rollers wanting to get away from the big city hustle. Frank Lloyd Wright had just established a rough camp north of town which years later would be known as Taliesin West.

  There was a dark side to this rural simplicity, though. Racism of the Old West variety was rampant, and neither the Pima Indians nor the Mexican laborers who were building the city with their sweat and muscle were welcome in most of its establishments. As the war ground on, increasing numbers of Scottsdale High’s graduates were being shipped to Europe and the Philippines. The mothers of those who never made it back were given the cold comfort of posting Gold Stars in their windows.

  Suddenly the night seemed chilly and I wished I’d brought a jacket. “Maybe things were always falling apart, but without television commentators to sound the alarm, nobody knew.”

  He looked over at me, an astonished look on his face. “That’s a damned deep thought.”

  “My stock in trade.” Snuggling closer to him, I decided to lighten the subject. “Your little plan worked well the other night, by the way. I was impressed that you still get along with your ex-wife. Why’d you get divorced, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  He raised his eyebrows again. “I thought you…Ah, something tells me you don’t read People magazine. Or watch Entertainment Tonight. She left me for one of her co-stars.” He named a suspiciously brawny actor known mainly for his work in action movies. “They met on the set of ‘Komor the Magnificient.’ She was playing Princess A’tali.”

  “I take it he was Komor.”

  “Right. At least old Komor is doing his best to be a good step-father. He’s even enrolled the girls with his own martial arts instructor. I’ll be afraid of them in a few years. Hell, I already am.”

  “I’ll bet you miss them.”

  “Of course I do.” He was silent for a while, and I listened to the sound of the night wind whipping by. After a few minutes, he looked over. “Listen, Lena, I think it’s time I told you more about myself, that I…”
I never heard what Warren was going to say next about this messed-up world, because ahead of us loomed a sign, this way to happy trails dude ranch, and his attention shifted. “Hey, isn’t that where your ex-boyfriend works?” There was relief in his voice, as if he was glad to change the subject.

  “Dusty? He used to, but he lost his job.”

  “A drinking problem, I think you told me. Too bad. People grab all kinds of lifelines when they’re in trouble, but sometimes those lifelines are worse than the original problem.”

  “Yeah, I know.” But why did he?

  We drove on through the night for a little while, until, at my direction, he made a left onto Cave Creek Road. “Hey, aren’t we passing through Carefree right now?”

  “Yeah. But the Horny Toad’s in Cave Creek. Keep on going straight and we’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Carefree’s where Mark said his father lives. Why don’t we…?”

  “Got ya.” I hauled my cell phone out of my carry-all and dialed information. Gilbert Schank had an unlisted phone number, but that meant nothing. I next dialed Jimmy’s trailer, where his computer set-up mirrored the one at Desert Investigations. Within minutes he gave me Schank’s phone number and address. I thanked him and hung up.

  Warren looked impressed. “Wasn’t that illegal?”

  “Sure was. You going to turn me in?”

  “Not while you’re still under contract to Living History Productions.”

  With both of us laughing, he turned the Golden Hawk north off Cave Creek Road into the foothills of Carefree, and after getting briefly lost amid the unlighted, snaky dirt roads, we found ourselves driving up to a sprawling, Territorial-styled house that had more to do with an architect’s fantasies than it did with Arizona history. The “adobe” wasn’t real adobe, either, just plain old stucco with attitude. For this, the Schank family had torn down the real thing. As they say, there’s no accounting for taste.

  When we exited the Golden Hawk, a roadrunner hightailed it past us. Warren let out a laugh. “What the hell was that?”

  “A roadrunner. Don’t you watch cartoons?”

  He grinned. “Gotcha. If there’s a roadrunner, there must be a coyote.”

  I laughed. “There’s probably a hundred coyotes nearby, but unless they have rabies, they won’t bother us.”

  “Thanks for that little reassurance.”

  Gilbert Schank’s housekeeper, a young Navajo woman, answered the door and told us that he wasn’t receiving visitors. “Mr. Schank is unwell.”

  Before I could say anything, Warren thrust his business card into her hand. “That’s unfortunate. I’m Warren Quinn, of Living History Productions. Maybe you know my work? I received an Oscar for Native Peoples, Foreign Chains.”

  The young woman’s eyes lit up. “I saw that documentary, my entire family did! It played the movie house in Window Rock for a whole month. You’re really that guy? The one who interviewed Leonard Peltier in prison and told the world he’d been railroaded?”

  “That’s me. And you are Ms…”

  “Evelyn. Evelyn Tsosie. Leonard and the rest of the warriors in the American Indian Movement are my heroes.”

  Warren’s smile gleamed in the light spilling from the doorway. “A great cause. Listen, Ms. Tsosie, I’m working on another historical documentary right now and I think Mr. Schank can help me with it. I promise that if talking to us appears to bother him, we’ll leave.”

  Tsosie looked doubtful, but she was also obviously tempted to help the man who had brought her people’s grievances to the big screen. “Wait here.” She closed the door softly and was gone for almost five minutes, which is longer than it sounds when you’re standing on a doorstep in the dark, until she returned with a smile. “I told him who you are and what your film did for my people. He says to come on in.”

  Gilbert Schank was no fool. When you lived way out here in God’s country, keeping your housekeeper happy was of prime importance.

  She ushered us through the foyer and into the living room, which was the size of some barns and decorated in much the same way. Brightly colored stable blankets were tossed over two deep leather sofas, and various farm and ranch implements—possibly from the old Schank spread—were scattered throughout the room. In the corner stood a hoe that had been made into a floor lamp, while separating the two sofas was a battered plowshare underneath a panel of smoked glass that served as a cocktail table. The only reminder that Schank had founded one of the country’s largest collectible car businesses was the large Leroy Neiman painting on the back wall depicting a gleaming black Cord.

  Warren shrugged off the Cord as if it were a third-hand Chevy Nova. “Impressive, but it’s no Golden Hawk.”

  A deep chuckle drew our attention behind us. “I just got off the phone with Mark…and he told me he was trying to…sell you that ’56.”

  I turned to see Gilbert Schank sitting in a motorized wheelchair, a tube running from an oxygen tank to his nostrils. He no longer resembled the wiry little man who, in his old television commercials, sat astride a large palomino while he extolled the offerings of his vast autoplex. Now his nose was the biggest thing about him. His chest was sunken and his slacks hung loosely over toothpick legs. But although his body appeared as wizened as Chess Bollinger’s, his eyes sparkled with total awareness.

  “The Hawk’s one sweet-running car, even if it is a bit overpriced,” Warren said, without missing a beat.

  “A steal at…twice the price!” Schank murmured something to Tsosie, and after she gave his oxygen tank a final check, she walked away. Motioning his head toward her as she left the room, Schank said, with halting breath, “Don’t get any ideas that…I’m taking unfair advantage of the…indigenous population. I put Evelyn’s mother through college…now I’m doing the same for her.”

  “I didn’t say…”

  Schank’s chuckle trailed off into a wheeze as he waved us toward a sofa. “Now, now, Mr. Quinn. I saw…Native Peoples, Foreign Chains, and I’d be…a fool not to know where you’re coming from. So before…my oxygen tank here runs out…what can I do for you?”

  Warren and I settled ourselves on the sofa, and I let him take the lead. “I’d like you to tell your story on film, about watching those two Germans surrender to your mother. You wouldn’t have to come out to the set at Papago Park. We’d bring the equipment to you and it wouldn’t take more than an hour.”

  In the silence that followed, I could hear the hiss of the oxygen bottle and the rustle of plastic. Adult diapers? Before Schank spoke, I knew what his answer would be. “I’m past…caring about all that,” the old man said. “They’re all dead, anyway…so what does it matter?”

  Warren wasn’t about to give up without a fight. “You’re wrong there. Frank Oberle, one of the camp guards, is still alive and he’s in the documentary. And of course, I’m sure you’ve read that Erik Ernst filmed a couple of scenes before he was…”

  Schank cut in with a wry smile. “Before he…was murdered. We get the newspapers…up here.” He thought for a moment. “Sorry. The answer is…no. I can’t offer anything…that would help your film. And I don’t want…people to see me like this. Let them remember me…on my palomino.”

  Warren took his refusal with grace. “I understand, sir. But if you change your mind, will you give me a call?” He handed Schank a different card than the one than he’d given to Tsosie. “That’s my private cell phone number. You can reach me at any time.”

  He rose to leave but I held him back. As long as we were here, I had a few questions of my own. “Mr. Schank, since you grew up in Scottsdale, do you remember anything about the Bollinger murders? An entire family…”

  Schank’s crevassed face twitched. “I remember. They were…slaughtered. Horrible.”

  “Scottsdale was smaller in those days than Carefree is now and most people knew each other. Did you know any of the victims personally?”

  He shook his head. “No. Everybody was all…spread out. There wasn’t any…Scottsdale a
s such. But my dad knew…Edward…the father. Now, there…was a son of a bitch.”

  For a moment I didn’t know what to say. Gilbert Schank had skipped Dear Abby’s advice to never speak ill of the dead. “Um, why do you say that, Mr. Scha…?”

  “Gilbert, for God’s sake. Pretty woman…like you shouldn’t sound…so formal.”

  “Okay, Gilbert. Why do you call Edward Bollinger a son of a bitch?”

  His chuckle this time was long and dark, but it took away so much of his breath that in the end, he could only gasp, “Dad said…mean.” Then he closed his eyes and took a few deep hits of oxygen.

  “He beat his kids, is that what you’re talking about?”

  “That, too.” A few more hits. “But I…meant mean…in the other…sense. Dad told me he…was stingy. Counted every…penny. Wasn’t poor but sent his kids…to school in rags.” He fiddled with his tank and the hissing sound increased.

  I knew our time with him was running out, so I cut to the chase. “Mr. Sch…uh, Gilbert, who do you think killed the Bollinger family?”

  The look he gave me was steady but his voice was not. “Like I said, I was…just a kid. But I always suspected…it was Thomas.” He began to cough.

  I waited until he caught his breath, then asked, “Thomas who?”

  As he was about to answer, Tsosie came hurrying into the room. “I heard him cough.” She knelt down beside him, eased a little more air into the line, then smoothed his perspiring forehead. He looked at her in gratitude when she said, “You’d better go.”

  Warren stood up to leave but, fearing this might be my last chance to pump the old man for information, I remained sitting.

  “Thomas who, Gilbert?”

  Somehow the old man summoned the strength to answer. “Guy who…found…them. Thomas. Edward’s…kid brother.”

  The papers had said that the bodies were found by a family member, but had not named the specific person. When at last I found my voice, I sounded almost as breathless as Gilbert. “Edward’s kid brother? But…okay. If Thomas Bollinger didn’t get along with his brother, I can see it, maybe. Old grudges ending in a fight, something like that. But why would Thomas kill the whole family?”