The Triggerman Dance (10 page)

"I take one step at a time. That's all. One little step at a time. I trust these two people."

Weinstein sighed and finally looked up.

Evan took a long moment to study John, then commenced building another pork taco. "I'm curious," he said finally. "I'm curious about how it felt to be poking Rebecca Harris while she made plans to marry someone else. Can you help me out a little here?"

"No, I can't. That's none of your business."

"Oh, it's most definitely my business."

"Then use your imagination, or go to a library, or call a radio shrink and ask. I won't talk to you about her. She's not a part of this. If that means the whole thing is over, then the whole thing is absolutely over. Don't say her name again. I don't like the way it comes out of your mouth."

Evan stared at John. His eyes were dry, unblinking. "I'll tell you this, Mr. Menden—if you worked for me and said that, I'd slap the living shit out of your head and get you assigned to Alaska."

John shrugged. "Guess I wasn't cut out for Bureau work."

"No. You're the kind of smart guy who likes to stay solo, make his own mistakes, achieve martyrdom. I don't. Joshua doesn't. Sharon doesn't. We're team players. We're real Feds. What we like to do is win."

"I can stand winning."

"You better be ready to. I'll do almost anything to win."

They finished the meal. When it was over and the cook had cleared the dishes, Evan dropped his briefcase onto the table, opened it and removed a stack of paper.

"Loosen up your trigger finger, John," he .said. "You've got about a hundred forms to sign. They remove us from any liability for you. They protect us from just about anything you might say to a court of inquiry. They prevent you from going public with anything you do or learn while working with us, whether for private profit, or the catharsis of a guilty conscience, or simply getting back at the bastards who used you. The forms are all standard. I wouldn't even bother trying to read them if I were you. Basically, you're giving away the ranch, and that's the way we like it."

He passed the stack to Dumars, who laid it beside John's elbow.

John didn't look down at the papers. "I need to know what the plan is. I need to know what I'm going to be asked to do."

"You need to what?" asked Evan. "To
know}"

Evan's deep laugh issued forth again, his shoulders heaving and a pink rush of blood coming to his otherwise gray face. His

False teeth shone. Then Weinstein grinned—something Menden had never seen—followed by a giggle from Sharon Dumars. It was all just too much for them. The cook cast a quick glance at him from the kitchen, accompanied by a smirk.

"He needs to
know,"
said Evan, stifling his laughter, looking at Joshua. "God, this is some really funny material here."

Weinstein's grin dissipated and he drew a deep breath. "You will learn, John. That's all I can tell you now."

"Comforting, isn't it?" asked Evan, looking down at his watch. "Sign those papers, will you? I've got to see a man about a dog."

Dog or not, Norton
nee
Evan dismissed Dumars and John after John signed the papers. He glanced through them quickly, paying no attention whatsoever to Joshua Weinstein, who sat quietly in his chair. Norton slapped the last sheet over, stuffed the documents back into his briefcase and snapped it shut.

"He's uppity," Norton finally declared.

"We need his spirits high."

"Don't tell me what we need, Joshua. Is this honesty of his a chronic thing or just what he trots out when he's surprised by something?"

Norton now spoke without a trace of Texas accent.

"I haven't seen him surprised by anything yet. Menden reverts to candor when he's not sure what lie to tell."

"Certainly you'd warned him about the revenge and hatred speech."

"Well, yes. You have to understand, Norton, it's his high level of emotion that might make this thing sustainable."

"Stop quoting me." He sighed, hefting the briefcase off the table and onto the floor.

At this point the Latina cook came in, wearing a business suit. Her thick black hair was tied back and she was stuffing her apron into a duffel bag. She nodded at Joshua, then set her pistol on the counter and started putting away the clean dishes.

"Monica?" asked Norton, without looking at her.

"He's just confident enough to get into trouble," she said. "He needs to believe more in us. He needs to depend on us."

"He'll come to do that," said Weinstein. "We're trying to build a relationship with him, not offer a one-night stand."

"I don't trust pretty men," said Norton. "They lack character, period."

"He's passed every phase of his training perfectly. It's not his fault he's got a pretty face. That's what got us all here, isn't it?"

Norton nodded, acknowledging this reference to Rebecca. "How does he react to pressure?"

"The most pressure we've put him through was today, your questions about Rebecca."

"Based on that, I'd say he's liable to become pissed off."

"I think he can keep his head."

"Does he sprint at the end of his runs?"

"Always. Why?"

"He looks like a quick-comer to me. He might need endurance, Joshua. If he saves enough mustard for a sprint after seven miles, all the better. Has he shown any interest in Sharon?"

"A little. Not much. I could be wrong, though."

"Hmm. I'd sure like to have more pull with him than just you."

"Rebecca's the pull, Norton. Not me, or Sharon, or anyone else. He's single-minded."

"No use trying to change that, I suppose."

"Let's use it while it's there."

Norton and Weinstein stood and shook hands. Monica took a chair at the table.

"Things in Washington are okay," said Norton "Frazee is still too interested in Wayfarer, but I don't know how to correct that. And the more I try to shade him away, the more control he wants. He's like a kid with toys. I hate bureaucrats. Of course he's worried sick about the Hate Crimes money we got from the White House—worried about it going away. He's always whining about no money. So he's determined to keep this operation small and deniable. No show of force from us. No Ruby Ridge. No Waco."

"We've all got our crosses to bear," said Monica. "You're Joshua's, and Frazee is yours."

"Whose are you?"

"My husband's, I hope."

Weinstein remained standing when Norton sat back down. Joshua's stomach was trembling a little, and he felt uncertain in his knees. "Well?" he asked.

"Nice work," said Norton. "Move ahead."

They dropped John in front of a little house on Sun Valley Drive a small street off of Laguna Canyon Road, then headed for town to pick up some groceries for their celebration.

He stood there for a while, noting the fresh asphalt under his feet, the ivy choking the Chinese elm in his front yard, the wooden fence he'd built to contain the dogs, the old brick chimney and the forlorn face of the house he had once happily called home. Mrs. Gorman from across the street waved at him uncertainly, focusing on him with her weak eyes as if he were someone returned from the dead. He nodded, walked down the driveway and let himself in through the squeaking gate for the first time in almost five months.

The yard was overgrown, in shambles. Luckily, it was hidden from the neighbors by the ivy-covered fence. The lawn furniture seemed to have sunk into an abyss of weeds. The vegetable garden was profuse with zucchini, and pocked by gopher mounds. A ground squirrel, squash in mouth, hurried away toward the woodpile by the side of the house. The needles of a bristlecone pine lay deep beneath the tree, lashed loosely together by a silk skein of spiderwebs and funnels that shone dustily in the afternoon sun.

John sees Rebecca there, under that tree, sitting in a bead chair with a book open on her lap and her long pale legs stretched into a patch of late December sun.

"Wine?" he asks.

"You," she answers.

John worked the key in a lock gone stubborn with disuse. Finally it turned. Then the familiar clunk of the heavy door sucking inward, and the ambience—aged by absence but intact— reaching out to greet him as he stepped inside. Dust. Heavy air. The smell of loss. Shapes of things still firm in their places, matching perfectly the shapes and places in his memory. Sunlight diffused through the dirt of windowpanes. A potent silence. Home.

"Oh," he muttered.

He gathered up the sheets he'd placed over the couch and chairs, the television and stereo, the coffee table and hearth. The covers were heavy with dust, and so were the things beneath them. John had not known until now that motes were smaller than the weave of cotton. He took the sheets outside and tossed them into the weeds.

He walked back inside, leaving the door open, then went into the kitchen. He opened the blinds and windows. The refrigerator still hummed quietly and John was pleased that he had kept the utilities on. Five months, he thought. In the dining alcove off the kitchen he removed the sheets from the table and chairs, then slid open the glass door that faced the canyon drainage creek and dropped them to the patio. The bricks were buried by the bright orange bracts of an enormous bougainvillea growing beside the house. When the sheets hit, some of the bracts lifted up, then floated down in alternating sideways dips, like tiny magic carpets. And he sees her again on that patio, wrapped in a heavy blue robe he has bought for her visits here, with the rain pouring off the roof shingles on three sides of her, and she smiles at him over a cup of coffee as the steam issues up past her eyes and John thinks, yes, those are the eyes I've waited a lifetime to know.

He straightened the downstairs bathroom a little. The toilet bowl was stained, so he brushed it out with some liquid bleach, flushing twice. For Sharon, he thought.

Then he approached the bedroom. He didn't walk right in, but rather hesitated at the threshold and, leaning over it like an inquiring butler, scanned the room for its familiarities, its memories and heartaches. They were dense in there, too packed and coiled and alive for John Menden to confront just now. He kept seeing Rebecca by the planter in the rain.