A Stranger Lies There (31 page)

It was time to go. I looked at my watch and said, “We'll meet back here tomorrow afternoon. Late, maybe six. That okay with you?”

“Gimme a few extra hours. Say eight.”

“Eight o'clock.” As I got up Turret offered his hand, eyes on mine. I stared at it for a second, extended in peace, with a line of dried blood on the palm from the fishing line. Looked back up at his eyes. They didn't blink, just held mine.

I spoke slowly, making sure he understood. “Just because I'm accepting your help doesn't change anything between us. We're not partners and we're not friends, and I'll never have anything but contempt for you. Even if you hand me Deirdre's killer on a silver platter. Because as far as I'm concerned, this world would have been a better place without you. And the fact that doing this for me may help you sleep better at night makes me want to puke. God may have forgiven you, but I don't. When all this is over I hope you rot in hell.”

I didn't wait for a response. Just walked out of the café into the pounding sunlight, feeling somehow diminished after my outburst. As if Turret, who'd apparently come to terms with his past, now pitied me. And worse, that I deserved that pity.

I stopped in the gravel parking lot, disoriented by the heat and my own impotent rage. Deirdre's car still sat in front of the ruined yacht club, waves of heat boiling from the hot metal. Across the way, closer to the RV park, was a small motel. A trim building of freshly painted clapboard with neatly pruned bougainvillea vines wandering over the fence in front. It looked like it had dropped out of the sky, curiously immune from the wasting disease all around it. Two stories, with a covered veranda wrapped around the upper level.

I checked in without asking how much the room was, then found a small laundry area off the lobby. Upstairs, I peeled off my sweat-soaked clothing. Wrapped in a bedsheet, I brought everything downstairs to wash. Back and forth in that white sheet, like a ghost drifting through the quiet building.

Later, after a shower and a greasy meal at the café, I took a seat outside on the upstairs gallery overlooking the water. The surface of the lake was gray and opaque in the deepening twilight, giving back none of the light from the emerging stars. Nothing moved or spoke. The only sound was the faint, unearthly hum of the desert as it settled down for the night.

What was Turret doing right now? Had he been able to contact his friend in prison? Did he now have information that would lead me to Deirdre's killer? I knew questions like those would keep me up half the night, which was why I was out here instead of in my room. I'd needed the open air of the desert to relax my mind. I pictured the empty panorama in front of me as a vast refuge for the uncertainties spinning in my head. The slowing pulse of the evening had a calming effect.

But I couldn't shut down completely. Something caught my eye in the east. Yellow slashes against the indigo sky. I realized what they were: fighter jets streaking over the Chocolates, tracers shooting earthward like diving birds of prey. The fireworks went on for a while, making me wonder about all the scrap lying out there waiting to be blown to bits—the old Jeeps and tanks the army dragged onto the range as targets. Some of that stuff was probably Vietnam era, and the thought brought me back to the crippled veteran in the wheelchair I'd met this morning, then my own sad association with that war. It was amazing the way the past kept reaching into the present. I imagined the explosions hidden deep within the mountains right now blowing away all those memories. Down to the right, between the disintegrating yacht club building and its crumbling hotel, beyond the broken concrete that looked like a choppy sea in the moonlight, was the spot next to the water where that girl had mistaken me for Turret.

How different had we really been back then at the height of the war? Maybe that's why I still hated Turret so much; I saw a different version of myself in him. Dishonesty and selfishness were our common bond. Turret had harnessed those qualities for his own criminal pursuits. I'd allowed those same qualities to be exploited by someone like Turret, and in me they were profound weaknesses. If I'd been able to admit to myself the real reasons I had for joining Turret, none of it ever would have happened.

My mind flew forward a few years, to my prison sentence. I remembered the way it had hardened and changed me, not only for my own survival inside but in deeper ways as well. At first I'd accepted that I deserved to be there and derived a certain peace from that. But as the months went by, things changed. Other than the brief periods of time with Walt in the prison shop, anger, mostly at myself, became a constant companion which only occasionally found release in violent disagreements with other prisoners. Once I was out that anger exhibited itself in more subtle though just as destructive ways. The other night in jail, when I'd thrown my cellmate off the one bench just to be nasty, was something I would have done in prison. But after my prison release I couldn't get away with stuff like that without landing right back inside. My bitterness found its way to the surface in more personal and hurtful ways. Determined never to be taken advantage of again, I used others instead, never giving an inch if it meant compromising my own desires. The way I'd acted toward my last girlfriend before moving out to the desert was typical. I remembered the look on her face in the car outside the abortion clinic, when she'd pleaded with me to reconsider my ultimatum and instead I'd just repeated it: the baby or me. Her face collapsed inward, tears streaming down her face as she got out of the car and told me that I could at least come in with her. But I'd handed over the cash for the procedure and said I'd be back in an hour, then drove off without looking back, heart hard as stone.

It was the last time I ever saw her. When I returned a few hours later after getting drunk in a bar, she wasn't on the sidewalk out front or in the waiting room inside. I asked the nurse about her and was curtly informed she'd left. Confidentiality prevented the nurse from divulging anything else, but the contempt in her eyes told me everything I needed to know. The procedure had been done, and the staff knew all about me.

I'd never told anyone about the incident, not even Deirdre.

I thought about Turret again. I'd tracked him down here without much trouble. He obviously hadn't been hiding. Which meant he wasn't involved in what had happened, or, for some reason, wanted to be found. His rap about seeing the so-called light bothered me. Sounded a little over the top. But then again, a lot of people with religious conviction came off that way. Was Turret trying to do the right thing now? Or did he have something more sinister in mind?

Prison conversions were a dime a dozen. Turret pretty much admitted that himself. Twelve-step programs all through the system. Give yourself to a higher power, make amends to the people you've hurt. Etc. I'd seen it more than a few times with fellow inmates, especially as they neared their release dates. Helped them deal with the outside. So Turret was either being sincere, which made him a walking cliché, or trying to manipulate me again to his own twisted ends.

There was only one way to find out: let whatever he was doing play itself out.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The following day I slept through early afternoon, and woke up shivering under the covers. With the air conditioner on all night, the room was freezing. Condensation dripped down the window.

I turned the a/c off, showered, and made a pot of coffee on the in-room maker to settle in for the long wait. The hours dragged by, a succession of court shows and soap operas doing little to divert my attention. I checked my watch countless times, finally left around four for a hamburger across the street. Back in my room afterwards, I watched the shadows lengthen outside, the desert light fading from white to gold. If I'd been a smoker, I would have run out a long time ago. I paced the room back and forth, practically wearing a track through the carpet in front of the window.

A phone call came. Turret.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked.

“Saw you walk over there from the café,” Turret replied.

Of course, I thought, embarrassed at my paranoia. “So did you find anything?”

“Nothing specific yet. But something is going on. One of the guys at Calipatria I talked to? Real gabber in prison, knows everybody, always has a story to tell. Well, this afternoon he couldn't wait to end the conversation. Seemed nervous talking to me, said he hadn't heard anything. Which I don't believe.” A pause. “There's a couple other people I want to talk to. They're in a different cell block, so I gotta wait till after the hour. But we'll meet like we planned at about eight. That cool?”

“Who was the nervous guy?”

“The one I told you about. Did some work in New York a while back.”

New York. I wondered if it could be a coincidence. Didn't think so. If Turret hit another dead end, I'd have to go to the cops, come clean about my trip there and tell them everything I'd learned. I'd see what Turret had to say when we met.

At five minutes to eight, I went down to the café. As usual, the place was empty. I just got a glass of water. The waitress gave me a dirty look, but I didn't care. Dead flies were still on the windowsill, a few more now than yesterday. The surface of the lake glinted silver, a frozen pool of mercury. Even the gulls seemed tired out, standing motionless on the shore.

Ten minutes passed. The headache I'd had since morning felt like it was getting worse. I massaged my temples, trying to calm the pounding in my skull, and rubbed my eyes. When I opened them again, the shadows outside were gone, another five minutes with them. A phone rang back in the kitchen. A few moments later, the waitress came by and dropped a piece of paper on the table.

“Why don't you order something?” she said, annoyed, before walking away.

Rod & Reel Restaurant, Salton Sea Beach
was written on the paper she'd dropped. I left immediately, the twilight heat hanging in the air. A few minutes later, I pulled off the highway at Brawley Avenue, near a sign advertising the restaurant. It had a tall-masted ship riding blue waves over the word “Seafood.” I crept by an abandoned motel on the way in, a painted brick structure resembling one of those restroom complexes you see in public parks. A block or so further, the restaurant sat in a dirt parking lot. A dusty satellite dish out front along with two cars. Across the street, next to the motel, a snarled clutter of deserted mobile homes, most of them barely standing. Some had entire sections of siding missing, as if they were slowly being dismantled for scrap wood. They leaned at odd angles to each other, reminding me of a movie studio backlot as I got out of the car and went into the restaurant.

It took a few seconds for my eyes to adapt. I was in a dark lounge area. Four or five booths with dark red vinyl seats arranged around several tables, with the bar at the far end. Two men sat on stools there, watching a baseball game playing on the TV behind the bartender. Turret was nowhere to be seen.

“Anywhere's fine,” the bartender called out. I walked over to him and asked about Turret, describing him as I did so.

“Yeah, I know him. But he hasn't been here today.” He wore a collared golf shirt and an expensive watch. Hair combed back in a casual pompadour.

“Know where I might find him?” I asked, sensing it start to slip away.

“You a friend of his?” one of the customers asked me around a toothpick in his mouth. His face was sunburned, except for around the eyes and a line going back to each ear.

“I was supposed to meet him here. It's important.”

“He rented a trailer right down the road,” the bartender said. “Little one with the green awning. Tell him I got a steak waiting for him after.”

I thanked him and left, stopped outside the door to check out the street. A block over was a tiny trailer park behind a wood fence, a trellis curving over the center opening. I walked toward it, going by the ruined mobile homes I'd seen earlier, wondering if the car parked in the street behind me had been there before.

The green awning was the first one in. A round metal pod up on blocks, with no lights burning inside. I rapped on the door: no answer. Looked around. The place seemed pretty empty, except for the insects swirling around a porchlight a few trailers away.

“Hey. You in there? It's Ryder.” Another knock, more silence. I put my foot on one of the metal steps and turned the knob. Jerked the flimsy door open, then stepped inside, having to duck my head a little bit.

It was even dimmer than the restaurant had been. I saw a faint human shape lounging on a couch to my right.

“You awake?” I said, reaching for the wall-light next to the door.

The trailer rocked, then someone pushed me into a small dinette table, where I knocked a plate of spaghetti to the floor. It landed with a wet plop, spraying sauce.

“How's it going?” the first one said. Another man squeezed in behind him. Turret still didn't move. Neither did I, with their guns pointed at me. “New York was fun, huh?” He looked over at Turret and asked, “Why did you shoot him?”

Turret was staring straight at me, unblinking, a dark red stain on his stomach. Suddenly I could smell the rusty scent of blood.

“You followed me out here?” I saw the back of a third man's head outside, keeping watch. His hair was red.

The guy closest to me shook his head. “Your friend oughtta know to keep his business to himself in the joint.”

The prison grapevine. Turret must have let something slip about his stopover here. No wonder Turret's friend had acted all squirrely with him earlier. He'd given up Turret's location. Guys like these probably had connections all over the place.

“You going to kill me now?”

“No, Turret did that. He surprised you with this,” he said, pulling out Turret's fillet knife.

“Why?”

“Your wife didn't tell you?”