The mayor had just been convicted of influence peddling, and all Deist said was, “I’ve done things I’ve been ashamed of. I’m sure the mayor has done lots of good things, and he’ll find ways to do more.”
By the end of the afternoon the fence was fixed.
“Are you sure I can’t pay you something?” Bill said. “I’ve taken your whole day, and I now have a good-looking fence, thanks to you.”
“You don’t owe me a thing,” Deist said. He mopped at his brow delicately, and wiped sweat from his glasses. “I enjoyed working with you.”
“But why’d you do it?”
Deist shrugged. “It was quite selfish, actually. I knew it would be good for
me
.”
“I gotta say, you strike me as about the happiest guy I ever met, short of a retard or two.”
“I’ll try to take that as a compliment.”
“How do you do it? Are you on tranks or something?”
“No, no. It’s Jesus who makes me happy. Some years ago I put my life in the care of the Lord, and nothing but good has flowed to me from that decision.”
“You’re kidding. You’re born again?”
“I don’t use that expression myself—it has political overtones I’d rather not be associated with. But I am a Christian, yes. I believe that Jesus Christ was God made man, and I should model my life in all ways possible after him.”
“I don’t recall any fence-fixing in the Bible.”
“Jesus was kind. I try to be kind. But I didn’t come here to convert you, I just couldn’t stand to see a man wrestle with a fence post all alone on such a hot day.” Deist grinned. He had a sizable gap between his front teeth. “And now I better skedaddle or my wife will have my hide.”
Bill wiped his hand on his pants and put it out to shake. “Ronnie, I can’t thank you enough.”
“You’re welcome. I enjoyed it.”
“You’re weird, you know that, right?”
Deist smiled, flashing that gap again. “My wife says the same thing.” He climbed into his truck and backed out onto the street.
“Hey, Ronnie,” Bill called out. “Which church you go to?”
And that was how he’d turned his life around. He attended the local Baptist church that weekend, had himself dunked a couple of weeks later, and he had never wavered in his faith since. It didn’t take him long to realize that most born-again Christians were not as cheerful as Ronnie Deist. But they were solid people, they had a fallback position, they had a bedrock belief in God’s wisdom that could not be shaken, and once Bill introduced that belief into his own life, that life began to improve.
He got the job with Baxter Secure Solutions, he started taking night courses in computer security and forensics, and the Bible became his constant solace. Now that he knew there was a purpose to every little bit of suffering he had to go through, it became easier to endure. Being fired, being alone, well, God wanted him that way, obviously. Being fired was what had led him to God in the first place, and being alone was what left room in his heart for God to take up residence there.
And then He had brought him Sabrina. All right, it was not a conventional romance. A wedding date had never looked in the least likely. And physical comforts? Well, God didn’t want you to be plucking that particular fruit unless you were married, so clearly right now he wanted Bill Bullard celibate for reasons that might or might not become clear in time.
But poor Sabrina. That girl was so lost. She’d had such disadvantages. Raised by a criminal, for one—hard to imagine a bigger handicap than that. How could you develop a moral code when your old man was a professional thief?
They had met at work. Bill was covering the day shift at the Flamingo, and he’d caught her coming out of a twelfth-floor corner suite in a maid’s outfit. It was only a matter of luck, really. He’d been up on the floor because a female guest was complaining that one of her many suitcases had been stolen. It had taken Bill all of about five minutes to determine the real story. She had complained the previous day about elevator noise in her tenth-floor room, so they’d moved her. Somehow they missed a suitcase that had been tucked in the back of her closet, and it had remained behind in the other room.
As Bill was coming out of her room, he saw this very attractive maid emerging from the suite at the end of the hall. Bill happened to know that the twelfth floor had already been cleaned, so he went to ask her a thing or two.
“Sorry,” she’d said. “I’m new here.”
He’d then asked for her hotel ID, which was clipped to her belt. It turned out to belong to someone else entirely. The only thing she had in common with the photo was dark hair. He cuffed her right there in the hall while he looked through her maid’s cart.
“Well, if that don’t beat all,” he’d said, pulling two purses out of the cart. “You always wheel cash and valuables around in a cleaning trolley?”
“I have no idea how that stuff got in there,” she said.
He took her down in the freight elevator to the security office, sending his junior to go work the lobby. The normal routine was to get a name and take a photograph, and then call the police to send a car. A security man was essentially just a witness. She had told him her name—phony as it turned out—and he had taken the picture. He had even had his hand on the phone, ready to dial.
Then she said, “Please don’t call the cops.” Normally, of course, he would have ignored such a request. He had arrested more than a few women in his time on the force, most of whom broke down in tears right away, and he had always found it easy to ignore. Some had hinted at the possibility of sexual favours in exchange for freedom, and he’d ignored that too. He booked them all. But that was before Jesus had come into his life.
Sabrina hadn’t burst into tears. She had just explained, pretty accurately, how things would go if she was arraigned on a break-and-enter charge: the bail, the trial, the last-minute guilty plea and—since this was a first offence—the suspended sentence. “I just don’t see it doing me or the owners of that property any good, do you?”
“And where in creation did you get the idea that I’m here to do you good, young lady?”
“I don’t know. Something in your face, I guess. Something tells me there’s more to you than your job.”
He knew, despite the evident sincerity in those green eyes, that this girl was fast-talking him, but somehow it didn’t matter. Las Vegas was full of beautiful women, and sex was readily available; it wasn’t that. Something about Sabrina got to him in a way that was new, and for the first time he sensed what Ronnie Deist called “the touch of the Lord’s guiding hand.” Bill Bullard was being called off the bench to help with the Lord’s game plan.
“If I were to let you go, there would be certain conditions,” he had said, amazed at himself even as the words left his lips.
“Such as?”
“Well, you’d have to come to church with me for one.”
“Are you serious?”
“And not just once. You’d have to come once a week for a couple of months.”
“That’s possible. I’m not saying I’ll do it yet. What else?”
“You’d have to let me help you.”
“What, you’re a priest now? A social worker?”
“No, I’m just a man who sees a person in trouble. You tell me you got no money and your landlord’s kicking you out end of the month. You’d have to let me help you find a job and a place to stay.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “But if you think I’m going to sleep with you, you can dial the cops right now.”
So Bill set about trying to bring Jesus into Sabrina’s life. He put his all into behaving the way Ronnie Deist would have—cheerful, helpful, relentlessly correct—a gentleman from morning till night, protective of the weaker vessel. And oh, what a vessel: that smile, those eyes, that obviously divinely crafted shape. Sabrina was so pretty she made his knees wobble. But here she was in Las Vegas, where she’d had some idea of becoming a croupier. Her daddy’s rap sheet hadn’t helped her there. Then she’d been working as a waitress at Bistro Monty, and the manager had harassed her so much she’d had to quit.
First thing Bill did was contact Luigi Monticello, the eponymous owner of Luigi’s. When he was still on the force, Bill had gotten a crooked health inspector off Luigi’s back, and the old spaghetti slinger had never forgotten it. Sabrina aced her tryout shift, and was soon working a couple of nights a week. Score one for the Lord.
On the apartment front, he had not been so lucky. He had gone over the papers and the Internet ads relentlessly, but the studio apartments they looked at were either uninhabitable or too expensive for her ever to save any money. After three weeks he’d suggested she move in with him. Strictly platonic, he’d promised, and he’d meant it. Lord knows he’d meant it.
Sabrina kept her part of the bargain by going to church with him every Sunday. Although she was always polite about it, it was obviously not “taking.” He’d ask what she thought about the sermon and she’d just smile and shake her head. “Not for me,” she’d say. “Sorry, Bill. Not for me.”
When she finally had to move out of her apartment, she did agree to come and stay with him. “But let’s get this straight,” she had said. “The minute you put a hand on me, or come into my room, or make the least sexual suggestion, I am out of there, is that understood?”
“I have no problem with that,” Bill said. “You see, Sabrina, my faith has taught me to be grateful for all I have, and you’d just be doing me a favour in letting me share some of that happiness. No cost to you whatsoever. Except the church. The church deal stays the same.”
When she first moved in, she’d stayed in her room all the time. He had to coax her out of there like a stray, talk her into watching a little TV or sitting in the living room over a beer.
Now and again he would indulge in some Bible talk, trying to open her up to the idea that God is not just for Sundays. When the moment seemed apt, he would call up a telling story from the Old or New Testament. Sometimes she listened, nodding thoughtfully. Often she laughed.
“You’re such a wacko, Bill,” she’d say. “You know that, don’t you? You’re a religious wacko.”
“If by that you mean the life and death of Jesus Christ informs my day from morning to night, then yes, I hope I am a religious wacko.”
“See, only a wacko would say something like that.”
Bill remembered the spark in her eye when she’d said that, the rueful way she shook her head, black hair swinging, and it pricked his heart. It was the good things that hurt the most—her smile, her laugh. His life was a gutted hulk without them, even if Jesus was still around.
“The Lord must want something of me,” Bill told himself, sitting up on the couch. “He’s sending me this pain for a reason. He wants me to learn something. He’s telling me it’s not over. There’s more in this particular lesson plan for Bill Bullard.”
From a cluttered desk drawer he pulled out a portable hard drive, plugged it into his computer, and booted up. Bill did not pride himself on a great many things, Lord knew he had his limitations, but he did have a certain gift of foresight. Sabrina was not always gently amused by his efforts to protect—and, all right, correct—her, and this led to arguments and shouting and even a swat or two. And one night, after things had reached a particularly unpleasant pitch and he was certain that Sabrina was planning to catch the next flight out, he had attached a FireWire to her PowerBook and sucked out a copy of her entire hard drive.
He opened it now on his own computer and warmed up by taking a scroll through her music files, recognizing almost none of the so-called artists listed there. Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, that was about it. What the hell was Arcade Fire? Was that a band? A movie? Bjork? Wolf Parade? How could you listen to people with names like that?
Her photos were more interesting, although ultimately disappointing. A more than passing familiarity with online porn had given Bill the notion that young women liked nothing better than to photograph each other masturbating. Sabrina had apparently resisted the temptation. Even when they were blurred and obviously drunk, her friends remained completely clothed. There were lots of pictures of someone called Aunt Rachel—in fact, she had her own folder. And she occurred a lot in another file called Dallas 2007.
Sabrina’s email was more revealing. Between its Sent file and its address book, it contained everything a man on a mission could want.
At Wickenburg, the highway became 60/89, and Max took the wheel. His nap had left him grumpy and uncommunicative, and the three of them travelled in silence. Owen blasted aliens on his laptop for a while, and read some material he had downloaded about Tucson, but he had trouble concentrating—not because of Sabrina this time. He kept seeing Pookie in his mind’s eye, bald head and goofy smile. Why would anyone want to hurt Pookie?
It was late when they arrived in Tucson, and they had trouble finding the trailer park. As soon as they were parked, they couldn’t wait to escape the Rocket, so they unhitched the car and went into town.
“Ugh,” Max kept saying as they passed miles of concrete buildings on eight-lane streets.
They had a late dinner at a Mexican joint called the Poca Cosa, but even a couple of margaritas failed to cheer Max up. He asked Sabrina what her plans were for the next day.
“I guess I’m not sure,” she said.
“You can still stay with us if you don’t have anywhere to go,” Owen said. “I mean, if you want to come along to El Paso and see your dad …”
Sabrina smiled, shook her head. “That’s okay. You two have been great, but I can look after myself.”
Now it was Owen’s turn to be depressed.
When they got back to the trailer, Max went straight to bed. Owen made popcorn, and Sabrina sat beside him on the couch to watch an old Clint Eastwood western. She fell asleep about halfway through, and Owen—he didn’t exactly stare—but he observed her out of the corner of his eye. She was out like a little kid.
She woke immediately when he switched off the TV.
“Why’d you turn it off?”
“You weren’t watching, and I’ve seen it too often.”
She stretched, revealing a good deal of midriff. “What’s Max so upset about? It’s not because of me, is it?”
“Max is just moody.”