Something for Nothing (8 page)

Of course, Martin wasn't keeping watch for Miriam while she peed in her own bathroom and in her own house. He was an intruder, and if she saw him, he'd go to jail. He'd miss his trip to Mexico. He'd miss the big horse race at the fair. And he'd miss what was left of his children's youth. They might come and visit him at whatever jail he was in, but it wouldn't be much. Peter would look down at his feet and mumble, and Sarah would roll her eyes, eager to get out of there and back home so that she could make some phone calls.

His first instinct was to simply jump up and sprint right the fuck out the house—just blast out of there, hit the fence, jump into his car and drive off, the car fishtailing through the big dirt clods of the orchard, and then righting itself once he hit the frontage road and the freeway after that. He could even call from Mexico, and if it seemed as if Miriam had spotted him, knew it was him, he'd just never come home.

But she
would
be able to identify him, he was pretty sure. There just wasn't enough space to make a clean break. And besides, he was so terrified, he wasn't sure his legs would carry him out of the room, much less across the yard and all the way to his car. And so, as she unrolled the toilet paper and wadded it up and wiped, he rolled onto his back and tried to inch himself under the bed. But he didn't fit. It was a pretty tall bed, but he just couldn't do it, just couldn't wedge himself under there. So, as she came walking out of the bathroom, he held his breath, willing himself to be small and noiseless. He willed himself to cease existing—tried to transform the scenario into the dream (the nightmare) when you were in an impossible situation (one exactly like this, in fact), and somehow you became invisible at the very moment you were about to be caught by your enemy, or flew away just as you were about to be hit by an oncoming car.

Martin heard Miriam stand in the space between the bathroom doorway and Hal's side of the bed. She was talking to herself, but quietly, whispering, almost. He could tell that she was thinking about things she had to do. He could also tell that she was in a hurry. For him, though, things had slowed down, and he was able in the stretched-out pocket of time he'd entered to think with surprising clarity about his situation, and the options that remained open to him. For starters, he knew he had the option of killing her. He certainly didn't want to do that. But he also knew he didn't want to go down the path that getting caught (because he hadn't killed her) would entail. He wasn't sure how to do it. He could shoot her with the .22, of course; it was right there in his pocket. But that would be loud and risky. And could you actually kill someone with that gun? It was awfully small. He could also knock her down, strangle her, or maybe use one of the pillows to smother her. Then he'd tear the house apart, make it look like it was a robbery gone wrong. Stranger things had happened.

He thought, as well, about kidnapping her, forcing her to come with him to Mexico. But he wasn't able to sustain the absurd notion of actually getting her into his car and then into a plane. Nor, therefore, could
he muster the necessary energy for the related, extended fantasy of her eventual decision to love him and their new life in Mexico.

But of course he wasn't able to sustain the fantasy of killing Miriam, either. He was pretty sure that he could have killed Hal Weaver in this situation—might have already done so, in fact, especially if he'd grabbed one of the shotguns from under the bed. Eliminating the Hal Weavers of the world wasn't a moral dilemma as far as Martin was concerned. In fact, the brutal but mysterious murder of Hal Weaver might present advantages to Martin. He could become the caring friend and neighbor to Miriam, the one person to whom she could confide her secret fears and fantasies, the things she hadn't been able to communicate to Hal because in fact their marriage had been over years before the murder. And maybe—inevitably—Martin and Miriam would have sex right here in this bedroom, in the very bed separating him from Miriam.

Martin heard a ringing sound, and suddenly time resumed its normal speed. Was it a home alarm, he wondered, finally kicking into gear and warning Miriam there was an intruder in her home? The bell sounded again, and he heard Miriam mutter, “All right, all right already.” And then he heard her walk out of the room and down the hall.

Someone was at the door. In fact, he realized, this was probably why she was home: she'd come to meet someone here. Seconds later, as she opened the door and greeted the person, he was able to glean that it was a repair guy of some sort. Something about the dishwasher or the garbage disposal, he thought he heard them say. Something in the kitchen, anyway. But at that point he wasn't really listening. By that time he was on his feet. He felt for the .22 in his pants pocket, then scanned the top of Miriam's bureau for something—anything—to grab.

And then he was pushing open the French doors that led out onto the back patio. He slipped out of the house and onto the crunchy-sounding brick, and then as quickly as possible down to the lawn and along the fence. Finally, and without looking back (in case he'd been spotted from the house, which he doubted: the kitchen didn't look onto the backyard), he pushed himself through the gap in the fence
and out to the orchard and then to his car, stumbling again through the big, frustrating chunks of dirt.

He was soaked with sweat. His heart was beating so furiously that it actually hurt. He caught his faint reflection in the driver's-side window, but he ignored it. Instead, he opened the car door and sat down. He pulled the door shut and scanned the orchard. He didn't see anyone. No one was chasing after him, apparently. After another couple of seconds he realized that he was giving off a sickly odor of fear—any cop stopping him now would drag him in on that basis alone.

Another minute or so later, still feeling the heavy beating of his heart, he looked down at his left hand, and saw that he was carrying a small jewelry box. A tiny jewelry box: it was about six inches long and maybe three inches wide, he guessed. He must have grabbed it from Miriam's bureau. He didn't even remember reaching out and taking hold of it, but he must have, because here it was, in his hand. It looked old, like a keepsake of some sort, he thought. It was pewter or silver or something like that, and it had intricate, swirling designs on the lid. The metal was black and oxidized in the crevices of the swirls.

He sat there for a second, looking down at it, and then he opened the lid. Inside, it was lined with a reddish felt, and nestled into the material were several small items, each of them probably important to Miriam in some way, and valuable looking. There was a pair of diamond earrings, a silver locket on a silver chain, and two rings. One of the rings had a large stone that looked like an emerald, and the other one had a lot of tiny diamonds set into it. The one with the diamonds looked like an old engagement ring; Martin figured it was her mother's, or maybe her grandmother's. She was probably planning to give it to her daughter someday—had been planning, that is, because it wasn't going to happen now. There was no picture in the locket, which he found disappointing. He'd been hoping to see one of those old photos of someone from the 1920s, with the person stiff and formal but in a way that spoke to the greater seriousness and maturity of earlier generations.

Under the jewelry lay three coins. They were gold. One was a
ten-dollar coin dated 1908. It had a picture of an Indian on it. There was also a twenty-dollar piece dated 1900, with some sort of Lady Liberty image on it. She was surrounded by a halo of stars. Last, there was a one-dollar coin from 1854. Like the one from 1900, it had a Lady Liberty image on it, and she, too, was surrounded by this semicircle of stars. Martin held them in his hand, as if assessing them. They were hefty, he thought. And pretty valuable—probably a couple of hundred dollars apiece.

He looked up again, scanning the orchard, and then twisted around to make sure no one was sneaking up on him, or that there wasn't a cop slowing down, trying to figure out why that car was back there in the orchard. No one.

Martin put the coins back into the box, and put the box under his seat. Then, remembering the gun in his pocket, he took it out and slipped it under the seat, setting it next to the jewelry box. He started the car, swung it around, and started to drive slowly out of the orchard—no need to peel out fast, fleeing in a panic. He slowed to a stop at the edge of the road, waited for a pickup truck to drive past, and then pulled out.

As he drove toward the highway, it occurred to him that those coins were probably even more valuable than he'd thought. Gold prices had skyrocketed in the past year as oil prices shot up, and so these would fetch a nice little bit of cash. Not that he was stupid enough to try it—if Miriam noticed the jewelry box was missing, the first thing she and Hal would do is call the local coin dealers and pawn shops. Plus, it wasn't like three gold coins would set you up for life (or pay off someone like Val Desmond). Still, it was exciting . . . and almost exactly what he'd hoped for when he decided to actually break into her house and snoop around. It was as if he'd stumbled onto a little bit of treasure back there in Miriam's bedroom. And the best part was that now it was his.

V
al called a little over a week later and said he was ready to set up a run to Mexico. Ramirez was about to get another shipment, and, as planned, he'd offered to cut Val in. Martin didn't know how much Val was making off these exchanges, but it had to be a fair amount if he could afford to forgive half of Martin's debt, and then pay him five thousand dollars every time he flew down there.

Val wanted Martin to drive out to his house in Pleasanton and pick up the cash. “You should come and see Temperature's Rising, anyway,” he said. “His morning splits have been great. I think he's got a real shot at the fair.”

Martin said okay, fine, and half an hour later he was on the way. It was a Saturday, and he wasn't up to much. He wondered if he should have acted busy, said it would be a few hours, but the talk about Temperature's Rising had made him too excited to bother. Being on the main card was a big deal, at least for the local racing community. No, it wasn't going to get written up in the
Daily Racing Form,
but the area trainers and jockeys would know whose horses had gotten into the race and which ones had done well. Martin was more than a little pleased to think that he might become an owner the local people in the business might know and talk about.

“Oh, sure,” he imagined people saying as they sat at the track looking through a race program. “That's Martin Anderson's horse. He's hooked up with Val Desmond, but he seems to be the brains of the outfit. His horses always run strong.”

In fact, of course, it was Val who suggested horses to Martin—Martin wouldn't have known where to look, much less what to look for. And Val's inclination was toward tall and lanky horses, rather
than those that got by on raw power. A horse like Secretariat had both height and power, and certainly that was ideal. But that sort of horse was out of Martin's league (out of Val's, too). And so Val tended toward horses with the long stride, which could gobble up yards and yards of track with each gallop. They were better at longer distances—a mile and up, basically. None of this six furlongs stuff. Cloudy River and Uncle Jack had been in this general mold, and both had been pretty solid horses, each of them winning a handful of races in the couple of years that Martin had owned them. Martin wasn't sure, but he thought he might've actually turned a profit with them. At the least he'd come close to breaking even—boarding and training included. Most people couldn't say that about their racehorses.

As for Temperature's Rising, he was like an exaggeration of the type. He was 16.2 hands tall and noticeably lean—skinny, almost. Only just over a thousand pounds. And as Val had explained to him, he had nicely formed withers. They were a little high, but not too high—not a problem for a saddle, but it seemed as if the vertebrae of his withers were quite long front to back, which meant (again according to Val) that he could really rotate his shoulders backward and increase his stride length.

Once or twice Martin had heard people make a passing joke about how thin Temperature's Rising was. But they stopped talking when they saw him run. He wasn't going to be a Grade 1, nationally recognized horse. He was definitely kicking some serious ass at the local tracks, though. And to Martin, it was as if he'd managed a date with the prom queen. If his horse actually won at the fairgrounds, it was going to be as if he'd managed to go all the way.

As he drove, Martin felt his spirits begin to lift a little bit. He was starting to imagine himself as a boxer, one who'd been cruising through the early rounds, jabbing and pretty much scoring at will. Those were rounds one through six, say (the early years with Anderson Aircrafts). But he'd walked into a left hook in about the seventh (with the oil embargo). He'd been knocked on his ass, in fact, and he'd been in trouble
for the next two rounds after that (no business, mounting debt). But now it was the tenth round, and it seemed as if he might be getting his legs back, and his jab was starting to work again. Yes, he was cheating, if you wanted to look at it that way (because drug smuggling was the very definition of cheating—he knew that). It was like his trainer had given him a piece of metal to put into his right glove. But cheating was better than getting the shit kicked out of you, wasn't it?

He laughed—laughed out loud right there in the car. He glanced around, but there weren't any other drivers next to him. He was relieved. Not that it would have mattered, really, but still, he didn't want to seem like a nut—some wacko driving along and talking and laughing to himself. Though he could just have been listening to the radio and heard something funny. Like the
Comedy Hour
on KSFO. Peter listened to that at night sometimes; he'd take notes and then do the whole routine for Martin in the morning. Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, Hudson and Landry, the Smothers Brothers. Most of it was pretty funny, though of course it was a little weird coming from a nine-year-old.