A Stranger Lies There (32 page)

There was nothing in this tiny space I could use as a weapon. “I didn't say that.”

They looked at each other, and I launched myself toward the door. Two gunshots before I went through it, taking one of them with me and crashing into red-hair outside. Still on the ground, I grabbed his arm and pointed it toward the doorway, where the third man was about to shoot, and pressed his trigger finger. The man ducked back inside, bullets
thunking
into the metal, the talkative one trying to get his foot out from between the steps where it was caught. His gun was lying in the dust a few feet away. I slammed my elbow into red-hair's face and took off, gunshots cracking behind me. There was no way I'd make it back to the restaurant. I veered left into the mobile home graveyard, splinters exploding from the walls. I dove under one of them and scrambled through the dust, noticing for the first time the blood on my forearm. They were coming, footsteps crunching in the dirt. I got up, found a passageway between two trailers and squeezed through it.

“That way,” I heard, and looked under another trailer. One pair of feet to my right, on the other side. I ripped off a loose piece of wood and swung it just as he came around the corner. The nail punched into his chest, and he went down with the gun. I grabbed it and heard one of his partners call for him just before I took his knee out. One bullet at close range. He let out a blood-curdling scream.

“Is that you, Don?” Nervous. “Fuck!”

“I called the cops,” somebody yelled from the restaurant.

I went that way and saw the guy who'd tumbled out of the trailer with me limping toward their car, dragging his ankle. He turned toward me, raised his weapon. I pointed mine with two hands, but he fell flat on his back on the pavement before I got a shot off. He looked at me fearfully, pointing his gun in the air and telling me not to shoot.

“Don't fucking move,” I yelled, inching forward. “Throw the gun away.”

He tossed it a few feet, starting at another tortured cry from the man I'd shot in the knee. Red-hair dashed into the street thirty yards to my left, going for the car. I went after him, hoping to shoot out a tire or something. He reached the door, whirled around and fired. Then I had it coming from both sides. The man behind me was struggling to stand on his bad ankle, shooting wildly on unsteady legs. One shot hit red-hair in the shoulder, spraying blood and taking out the window as the bullet went through him. Glass rained down on the street and he staggered backwards, falling into the door before recovering. He pulled the door open, shooting my way without looking, got behind the wheel and roared off. Bad-ankle had emptied his gun, but he wasn't the one I wanted.

I gave it some gas when I hit the highway. A pair of taillights a few hundred yards up, weaving over the center divider. There were headlights coming on quickly, and he overcompensated, veering onto the shoulder, spewing dust before dropping out of sight. Pulling up moments later, I saw he'd plowed into a dirt channel at the side of the road. Horn blaring, steam billowing from the front where it crumpled into the dirt. The airbag had blown, a large dark circle visible on it. More blood ran down the seat onto the doorjamb. Touching what I thought was the wound on my forearm, I found that it was only tomato sauce.

Blood trailed into the brush, the drops glistening at my feet. Eventually, I lost them in the darkness. I wondered how far he could have gotten with the amount of blood he'd lost, but I kept going anyway, gun waving in my hand, the only sound the scratch of my feet in the dirt and the breath wheezing in and out of my lungs. The soil started getting more sandy, like the dunes further south where the recreational vehicles tore up the desert. I stopped and looked around. The unfiltered moonlight gave everything a ghostly cast that was otherworldly and gaunt. Hardy desert brush dotted my vision like febrile hallucinations. The highway noise had faded a while ago; I'd gone much farther than I planned.

It was time to go back. He'd probably already collapsed somewhere, and the cops would find him tomorrow morning. I went down into a shallow wash, where the going was easier, and started following it back toward the road. Suddenly, a quick rush of footsteps from the top of the embankment. A shadow darkened the starry sky as he hurtled downward and landed on me with a bone-jarring thud. He rolled off with a painful grunt, reaching for the gun that had flown out of my hand. I grabbed his ankle, pulled myself toward him and turned him over, throwing sand into his eyes. The next handful I ground into his nose and mouth, forgetting completely about the gun. The intimacy of this violent physical contact was exhilarating. He gagged and spat, head shaking from side to side, and the silver moonlight turned to red as I stuffed fistful after fistful of sand into his open mouth and nostrils.

Then I stopped. Cleared all the dirt away, caked with spittle and mucous. Stood up with the gun and listened to him gasping for air. He turned his head sideways and retched mud onto the ground.

“Hey,” I said, kicking his leg. He didn't even open his eyes. I leaned over and squeezed his shoulder, hard. His scream pierced the warm night, and he sprang up halfway before easing back down.

“Tell me everything,” I said, cocking the gun.

“You won't do it,” he finally said. His hand went to his bloody shoulder. It still hadn't stopped.

“Maybe not. Maybe I'll just stand here and watch you bleed.”

He looked at his hand, put it back on the wound. “It was your wife's son.”

I almost dropped the gun. “What?”

“I set up the adoption. She used the money to get clean, start over.”

The night pitched around me, like the deck of a ship. Dizzy, I staggered back a step before it all snapped into place. “Clayton?”

“I work for him,” he said, nodding tiredly. “I used to be Deirdre's dealer way back when.”

I squatted next to him. The moon was an unblinking eye high above. “Why did you kill the boy?”

He shook his head. “It was an accident. Wasn't even my gun.”

“So what happened?”

“Come on, I'm bleeding to death here, man.”

“You better hurry then.”

He grimaced in pain, readjusted his hand over the bullet hole. “Clayton sent me out here to stop John from meeting his real mother. If the illegal adoption got out the election would be over. So I flew out, waited for him to show up—”

“You couldn't stop him before that?”

“We didn't know where he was, only that he was driving here with a friend. No credit card records of a flight or hotels. Maybe he did that on purpose so there'd be no trace of the trip. Maybe he just didn't have the money. His friend had a car, so…”

“How did he find Deirdre?”

“One of John's cousins spilled the beans about him being adopted. Bound to come out sooner or later. This cousin called Clayton after John left and apologized. It was the first we'd heard of it. Then we found Clayton's files had been gone through. John broke into them and found his original birth certificate with your wife's name on it.”

“That information was from years ago. Where would—”

“Probably spent forty bucks on an Internet search, just like we did. Can find almost anybody nowadays.”

I wondered why John hadn't called Deirdre first. Probably afraid she wouldn't want to meet him. Harder to shut the door face to face.

“What about the illegal adoption? Why not just go through an agency?”

“Clayton and his wife got tired of waiting. It could take years for a white baby. Plus, they'd been burned a couple times by women who changed their minds after giving birth. When I heard Deirdre was pregnant I thought we could make something work. Everything would have been fine if Clayton had shredded that birth certificate like I told him to.”

“Why would he keep it?”

“I don't know, man. Because he's an arrogant bastard who thinks he's smarter than everyone. You'll have to ask him.”

“Get back to that night.”

“I tried to convince John not to go through with it. There was a lot he didn't know. Come back to New York and have it out with his dad, but don't do something rash now. I was trying to push him back to the car. His friend comes up and says to leave him alone. I tell him to mind his own business. He goes to the car and comes back with a piece. Little .22 popgun, probably shoots tin cans with it or some shit. Has the balls to point it at me. Sideways, like those gansta idiots in the movies—”

“Spare me the commentary, all right? Why didn't you just walk away?”

“Some punk threatens me with a gun, my first inclination is to teach him a little respect. Called me a goddamn Mick too.” He lifted his bloody hand, checked his shoulder. Bleeding seemed to have slowed. “Anyway, we fight over it, John gets into the act and the gun goes off.” He shook his head. “Twenty-two up top is bad. Bullet pinballs around in there because it ain't powerful enough to go straight through. I checked John's pulse, shook him a few times, but I knew he was dead. His friend took off like the punk he was.”

“And you took everything from John so he wouldn't be identified. Including his motel key.”

“I was trying to buy some time till we could figure out what to do. I looked around, expecting somebody to start yelling, but no one did. And that kid didn't report anything either. Probably because it was his gun.”

“But you were looking for him anyway.”

“Couldn't risk him going to the cops. Kept on thinking he would, that he'd be on the news any minute, but it never happened.”

“Why'd you wait almost two days to go to the Blue Bird?”

“That key didn't have the name of the place on it, just the room number.” I nodded, remembering what I'd observed in the motel lobby. “But it was an actual key, not one of those credit card deals, so I knew it wasn't one of the chains. Kid probably high-tailed it already, but I had to make sure. I drove all over the place, checking out every two-bit dump I could find. Couldn't call ahead because I didn't want some nosy manager involved. So it took some time.”

“And you were busy doing other things,” I said. “Like getting those weapons you couldn't bring on the plane with you.”

The man nodded, looking up at me.

“And scoring the dope you put into my wife.”

He closed his eyes, like he was expecting a blow. Or a bullet. Somehow I restrained myself. My thoughts were racing, crashing into each other. Deirdre couldn't have known the boy was her son. But if he was identified—from New York, and the right age—it was only a matter of time.

“Deirdre was your idea. You knew about her past. That you could get away with it.”

I didn't get an answer. The shot was impossibly loud, echoing among the foothills. The bullet flung sand into his face. He flinched, then looked back up at me, eyes shining with the moon's cold light. Somewhere a coyote howled, its cry plaintive and lonely in the hot night.

“I didn't want to.”

“So why did you?”

“Clayton's backers…,” he started, shaking his head.

I put the gun to his head. “They're not here. I am.”

“They'd spent a lot of money under the table on the campaign. We didn't have much of a choice. We didn't do things their way, they'd expose the black market adoption themselves. And make things bad with John's death.”

“Who are they?”

“They're connected. I make it a point not to know exactly. I did my own bullshit stuff back in the day, but not on the same level as these guys. They're into a lot of things, have some powerful people in their back pockets.” An ironic chuckle. “Thought I could go legit when Clayton hired me. But he had a few longtime acquaintances, you know? People that did favors for him early on, and expected to be repaid. With interest, so to speak.”

“Really not interested in your problems, pal. How'd they know I was in New York?”

“We knew you had no idea who John was because it would've been all over the news. I was supposed to keep an eye on you, make sure you didn't find out what really happened. Thought I'd blown it when you disappeared after your wife…” He looked up at me uncertainly. “After your wife…”

I kicked him in the teeth and his head snapped back.

“That help?” I asked.

He spat out some blood, but no teeth, and tried to take it like a man. Continued.

“But then out of the blue, you come back home that night. I followed you to the airport. When you got on a flight for New York the next morning, I made a phone call. They were with you the moment you landed.” More blood and spit, a dark silver dollar in the sand. “You got lucky with that story about Turret. Gave them a way to tie it up neatly. Otherwise you wouldn't have made it back here in one piece.”

“What, some sort of fatal reckoning? Like we did each other in?”

“That was the idea.”

His skin was shiny with sweat, and he shivered briefly. “I'm not doing so good here, man. You gonna leave me?”

“Take your belt off.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

He got up to a kneeling position. Undid the buckle with one hand, then pulled it through the loops. Looked up at me expectantly when he was done.

“Stand up.” He did, stepping back drunkenly before steadying himself. “Put it back on, loosely. Don't use the loops.” I watched him do it. “Slide the buckle around to the back.”

When he'd done that, I stuck the gun in my pants and pulled his arms behind him, none too gently. “Fuck!” he said through clenched teeth, as I put his hands together under the belt and tightened as hard as I could. “You got the gun, man.”

“Where's yours?”

He shook his head. “In the fuckin' car.”

I pushed him forward. “Start walking.”

We didn't speak on the way back. All of it was hitting me at once. How mentioning Turret had actually saved my life. Then Deirdre, and the way I'd shut her down the other day after the police interrogation. Maybe she wouldn't be dead if that conversation had run its course. Maybe she would have found the courage to finally tell me about having a baby all those years ago. There was no escaping my own culpability. I was drowning in regret, following Deirdre's killer through the sand that had once been at the bottom of an ancient lake. The gravel crunched under our feet, and I thought of the tiny fishbones being ground into dust on the shoreline of the Salton Sea.