“Quickly or quietly?”
“Quickly.” The word is out of my mouth before I’ve really considered the question, but I know it’s the right answer. Manheim has shown too much of his hand; I know now what his people are capable of. I’m certain that my mother is under at least one set of watchful eyes at this very moment, so the odds of an operative secreting her from the family home are slim. In this case, then, bigger is better. “Black and whites, flashing lights, whatever it takes. I need her out of there and tucked someplace where even Santa couldn’t find her.”
“Denton Street, right?”
“Right.”
“I’ll make the call.”
I know what those words mean for him. Duckey will have to call someone a thousand miles away and convince that person to utilize the resources of a big-city police department to collect and hold a woman on nothing but his say-so. I’m not deluding myself that things will be that easy, but I’m grateful for Duckey’s willingness to try.
“Thanks, Ducks.”
His answering grunt is cut off as he breaks the connection. I try my mom’s house again but get the same busy signal I got before I called Duckey.
As I pull the phone away from my ear, I see that I’ve walked in a straight line away from Parliament House, following a path toward the lake, and the older building that stands all but forgotten except to tour groups and those susceptible to nostalgia.
Espy is still at my side. I slow and then stop as it hits me that we’ve nowhere to go at the moment. I know where my car is parked, and I know the location of the hotel, and yet neither morsel of knowledge helps direct me. I am, again, at the mercy of a force outside of myself, and even though a friend with proven loyalties is exercising this force, it nonetheless leaves me stripped of immediate purpose. I look around and my eyes settle on Espy.
Then her hand takes mine and she leads me to a weathered wooden bench near the path, where she makes me sit, forcing me down with her stern but gentle eyes. And despite myself, I’m grateful. The bench is comforting, and I sit and consider the idea that I feel adrift because the Australian to whom I’ve just spoken has shown an ability to affect peoples and events on the other side of the world, whereas I can’t even get someone to water my cactus.
Esperanza squeezes my hand, as if to remind me that regardless of Manheim’s vast resources, I’ve shown that I’m equally resourceful.
“What now?” she asks, and immediately I feel like I’ve let her down. Up to now, I’ve been somewhat in control. But after hearing Manheim’s threat, everything’s changed. There’s a strange combination of emotions that comes from baring oneself, and I don’t think I like it.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Should we go back to Sydney?”
“I don’t know.”
It’s quiet here, like a still pool of water carved from a fast-moving river. I know that under different circumstances I’d appreciate the quiet, were I not fighting the dual sensations of worry and weariness as I am right now. If the last week has reinforced anything, it’s been an understanding that I work best when alone, when all I have to worry about is me, when a misstep means that I’m the only one in harm’s way. Death as an abstract. But it’s a completely different story when people I care about are drawn into my affairs. Al is dead because of me. Sarah is dead because of me. My mother is in danger because of me. It’s hard to swallow all of this with my customary aplomb. And it’s made all the more poignant because of the loss I’ve already suffered—the brother who, as it turns out, died because of this thing that has now ensnared me.
Death as something with power, with consequence. I think what I’m feeling is the idea that I’m no longer in my twenties. The great lie of that age group is work and reward—a universe with a munificent scale, where fear can be checked at the cloakroom. It’s a lie because an absence of fear can only mean that we do not dread loss, and that we value nothing so strongly that it would injure us to see it snatched away. It’s a world full of discovery and accomplishment and ego, absent honesty and loyalty. It’s also something I understood, at least in an intangible way, when I took the job at Evanston.
Esperanza’s thumb is making small circles on the back of my hand, and the touch draws me back until I can smell the grass and the air and the fresh mulch laid on the flower beds along the path. Her hand feels good in my own, and there’s a different quality to it that comes from age, from experience. I give it a squeeze and meet her eyes and, despite myself, I have to smile, because it’s exactly what I need. A rebuttal to the presumed superiority of unfettered youth.
Together we sit in silence. As the sun makes its incremental way across the sky, we wait for a call that will tell me if my mother is safe. What goes unsaid is our destination, and for more than the obvious reason. For even if I’m compelled to continue—and that’s something I’m not quite ready to wrestle with—I have no direction, no point that leaps out from a map, which would beckon the Mustang onward. So I’m at something of a dead end, and the only way I can rationalize anything beyond a return to the airport is to cultivate spite.
The thought brings a small smile. At least spite is something I’m good at.
The thing about waiting is that it can segue into a number of other things, depending on factors like the weather, one’s personality, or even biology. In this case, the latter—principally hunger—causes Espy and me to forsake our serene outpost for the manufactured comfort of a nearby restaurant. With several eateries within walking distance of Parliament House, we leave the car parked and try our luck winding our way on foot through the crowds until we find something that looks good.
Less than an hour later, Esperanza is picking at the Trout Amandine, leaving the sides of broccoli and wild rice untouched. A full glass of white wine sits on the table near her plate. It all tells me that she’s in a contemplative mood. If memory serves, she rarely eats when considering a weighty matter, a response that’s in direct opposition to her gastronomic tendencies when she’s angry. I remember her eating a great deal toward the end of our relationship.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Her eyes remain on the trout. She uses a single tine of her fork to flake away a tiny piece of fish, which she does not eat. There’s a long pause before she answers, “I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be.”
She looks up from the plate with mild accusation in her eyes, but there’s also warmth there that I would not have seen back in Caracas, or even Rubio. I’m not certain she’d have even been able to manufacture it.
“Always quick with an answer, aren’t you?
I’m worried about
you
because I don’t think you understand why you’re here.”
“We both know why we’re here.”
She shakes her head. “I know why I’m here, and that’s been enough for me up to this point. I’ve carried it for the both of us.”
“All right, why are you here?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“And you’re avoiding it.”
“Semantics,” Espy says, parodying my earlier comment.
“Etymology.” I smirk. “See. I can use big words, too.”
I feel silly, especially seeing as I’m verbally jousting with someone who has crossed the globe for me. Someone who only last month would have ritually spat on my picture.
“Jerk,” she says. “See, I can use appropriate ones.”
That forces a smile and I reach for her hand across the table. I’m not used to this kind of dynamic with someone when, for the last five years, most of my relationships have consisted of surface banter and ego gratification. Espy is like a female Duckey, although I’ve never tried to hold his hand. The thought gives me a shudder.
“What do you want from me? I was hired to do a job, and that job has brought me—has brought
us
here.”
“This isn’t archaeology. You were hired to find some bones, not traipse around the world angering government officials. Not to hunt down someone you think killed your brother.”
Or put my other loved ones in the crosshairs. I wonder, briefly, if Espy falls under that umbrella, but I quickly bury the thought. I don’t have time to consider something like that. It wasn’t on the agenda when this whole thing started, and I hate penciling things in. I let go of her hand.
“You’ve taken this far beyond where you should have,” she continues. “It’s become your personal crusade now.”
“Even if it is, what of it?” I retort.
“For one thing, I’m still not convinced your primary target is Victor Manheim. Or Gordon Reese. I think you’re angry enough at God to follow the bones anywhere they take you.”
“There you go with God again. What’s gotten into you?”
She shakes her head, as if in disbelief at my ignorance. “You’re looking for bones that have the power to raise the dead, and you want to keep God out of it?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, I can’t.”
Silence falls over us and I notice that everyone in the café is looking in our direction. Lowering her voice, Espy says, “You and I haven’t talked about this. Way too much baggage. But God means a lot more to me now than He used to. And before you go much farther, you should evaluate where you stand.”
What saves me from having to respond is the ringing of my phone. I fumble in my pocket until I feel the phone.
“Ducks?”
“She’s safe, Jack.” He coughs. “But she wasn’t happy about it.”
That elicits my first genuine smile of the day. “I can imagine.”
“Carrie called me and I talked to your mom and convinced her to go.”
“I’m surprised she listened. I didn’t think she liked you.”
“It would have helped if you’d told her they were coming.”
“The line was busy. I think she’s still on dial-up. Where did they take her?”
“Carrie wouldn’t tell me. Only that they couldn’t use a real safe house because it’s not official police business. But Carrie’s good people, Jack. I’m sure your mom’s safe.”
“Jim Duckett, you’re a beautiful human being.”
“You’re right, I am. But I’m also someone who needs a few good answers right now. Carrie said I better have something solid for her soon or she’d hurt me. And she’s a cop, so she knows how to inflict pain.”
Duckey is trying to keep it light but there’s tenseness beneath the words—a suggestion that there have been too many unexplained favors. I know I owe him an explanation— several explanations—and so I give him what he needs. I tell him everything. By the time I’ve finished, I can almost see my friend processing the story. Were we back in the student union considering the same matter over dinner, now would be the time when he would lean back in his chair and run a hand over his breast pocket, feeling for his cigar case.
When he answers, his words are not entirely unexpected. “Isn’t it time you got yourself back here?”
“Denver?”
“You know what I mean.”
Of course I do. And yet, at a time when the most logical response would be a yes, preceded by some off-color exclamation, I find that I’m ill-equipped to make that call. It takes a moment for me to realize that my inability to answer the question in the manner Duckey wants is that I no longer understand where I belong. I have a brief and painful fear that I will never see Duckey again, but I shrug and the thought is gone.
“I can’t come back yet, Ducks.”
“When’s a good time? Before or after you wind up dead?”
“I’m aiming for before.”
“But the target’s small and you’ve had way too much caffeine.”
I have no reply but to smile, which doesn’t translate well via satellite.
“What time is it there?” I think to ask.
“Dark.”
The waiter comes by and clears my plate but I don’t hear the few words he exchanges with Espy. I’m thinking about my friend, whose vacation I’ve crashed in all but body, sitting in his in-laws’ kitchen in his bathrobe. “You have no idea how much I appreciate everything, Ducks.”
The waiter has been by twice, yet it’s not until Esperanza slides the bill in front of me that I understand. I reach for my wallet and extract some of Angie’s cash.
After I hang up, I feel lighter. Walking through the whole thing with Duckey—forcing myself to lay it out in linear form—was cathartic. It’s helped me to get a handle on what we’ve done, and to begin to formulate what we need to accomplish still. As I try to answer that last question, I find that even if I don’t have a good long-term plan, I think I have a place to start.
T
wo hours have passed since I’ve seen another car, and I’m beginning to believe I’m the last man on earth. Like most people my age, I liked the Mad Max movies from the eighties, and I can understand how this setting spawned the post-apocalyptic feel of the films. There’s a primordial rawness here—the sense that the place exists as some vast and important thing regardless of the dearth of humans crossing it. It is all desert and sky, mile after mile of two-lane road scorched by the sun and covered over by windblown sand, and nature battling nothing but itself. And it’s an experience and a vista rendered impotent as long as the Mustang’s radio can pick up even one signal.
In this case, it’s an FM jazz station, originating from Leonora. I have off-tempo bass guitars and horns acting as fellow journeyers, and I’m grateful for the connection to the outside world, especially because Esperanza checked out over an hour ago. The music is a link to something beyond these environs—a reassurance that even this manifestation of nature is comparatively small as long as I have something else with which to occupy myself.
As the darkness gradually recedes, a coat of red dirt is revealed on the once-shiny body of the Mustang. With Sydney far behind us now, the road in front of me ascends and the Mustang’s tires knuckle down on the dust-covered surface. A line of low hills—red dirt with sparse green cover—is the only thing to differentiate this land from the desert I see through the windshield.
Regardless of the circumstances, I’m looking forward to seeing Jim, even if I have to steel myself for the barbs he will surely throw at me about my becoming a professor. My hands tap a quiet rhythm on the steering wheel, an anticipation of sorts. The last time we spoke face-to-face was at Will’s funeral and, while he fared better than I, even working for a few years after the tragedy, I don’t think he completely lost the haunted feeling when in the field. I hope retirement has been better for him. When I called and told him I was in the country, his pleasure couldn’t have been more genuine. Espy and I could stay with him and the lovely Meredith for a month and not be made to feel as if we were intruding.