Damaged Goods (21 page)

As she emerged into Hershel’s yard, the little orange Porsche still waiting for its new tires, he was standing on the porch looking out across the valley as if trying to see her.

“Morning,” she said, gaining his attention. A look of relief came over his dark face.

“Good walk?”

“Yeah. The orchard is peaceful, but huge and muddy.”

“I was worried.”

“No need to be.” She felt the warmth of the sun on her back now as she walked out into the open space next to the house. “I was just feeling a little antsy.”

“You’ve been into my closet, I see.”

She’d forgotten the work shirt, and paused to look down at it. Did he know she’d been to the auction barn?

He studied her. “You’re very beautiful, Silvie.”

Carl opened Hershel’s office and left the door standing wide in case anyone came in. He routinely handled the man’s affairs, and Hershel wouldn’t be surprised or angry to find him here, leafing through his papers, but the information he sought today was precisely what he chose to overlook on every other day.

He easily worked the combination on the wall safe and pulled out a small wooden box. He fumbled through his keys, seeking
the smallest one, inserted it into the lock, and pulled back the lid. It was full of various receipts and documents. Special information. Occasionally a seller would inadvertently leave a document that could be used to prove that Hershel sold guns without filing the federal paperwork required by law. Against Carl’s advice, Hershel kept these receipts and documents rather than destroying them. Carl never asked why; he guessed he already knew.

Carl identified several guns that were sold directly to Kyrellis, marked on the bottom of the pages with the dates and the amounts. They were all cataloged this way, some to other dealers, some that were put through the auction to increase the price because Kyrellis, in particular, was cheap. Near the top of the stack was an inventory list that Albert Darling had filled out for State Farm Insurance, which prominently called out a rare antique Winchester rifle. He estimated its value at twenty-five thousand dollars. Darling had left the expired receipt in his storage unit with the gun, which was where Hershel had found it when he liquidated its contents.

Carl selected a few good examples and went to the copier, where he made duplicates. He returned the originals to the box and put it back in the safe. Then he called Kyrellis.

“This is Carl Abernathy.”

“Who?”

“You know who I am.”

Kyrellis snorted. “I thought Swift handled all the firearms transactions personally now that he’s back.”

“I’m not calling on his behalf today.”

“Then why ever are you calling me, Mr. Abernathy?”

Kyrellis had always treated Carl as if he were common scum. People did, but Kyrellis was especially acidic. Carl had eventually come to understand that it was because he lived at Campo Rojo.

“I’m coming over to talk to you.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Why don’t you just tell me what you have over the phone? You no doubt know what I’m looking for.”

“This isn’t about a gun. It’s about Silvie’s box.”

“How does that concern you?”

“We’ll talk about it when I get there.” Carl hung up, his insides feeling dry.

Kyrellis’s house was tucked along the base of Bull Mountain, on a road called Beef Bend. Carl hitchhiked from Scholls to Sherwood, catching a ride with a man who agreed to give him a lift if he sat in the bed of the truck with his border collie. The dog was overjoyed to have company, licking Carl’s face. But once the driver reached speeds over thirty it abandoned him to zip back and forth between the wheel wells, pressing its face into the wind with rapt jubilation.

From Sherwood, Carl caught a TriMet bus into Tigard, then walked the last two miles. Kyrellis owned six acres, most of which were taken up with an array of greenhouses in various shapes and sizes that looked as though they’d been added over decades, without consideration for aesthetics or continuity. His home, a rambling brick ranch, had been built in the sixties. But it was upscale, with a stunning circular rose garden in front, flanked by rhododendron and laurel hedges for privacy. An old wisteria vine twisted up the front porch and ran across the entryway. With its leaves gone for the winter, its silver branches looked like hundreds of snakes in a hypnotic, intertwining embrace. As Carl waited for the man, he listened to a large chime sing out low, minor keys.

Kyrellis came to the door with a handgun strapped to his chest, visible through his cotton shirt. He scrutinized Carl for the same but eventually stepped aside, allowing him to enter. The house smelled of meat loaf and aftershave. Its dark interior was well appointed but outdated. The leather sofa in the living room appeared never to have been used.

“I heard about the incident down at the migrant camp yesterday,” he said, studying Carl’s eye and jaw. “You made the news.”

“I’m not here about that.”

“Are you the one who called immigration? I underestimated you, but it’s good to know you’re a red-blooded American after all.”

The short hairs at the back of Carl’s neck went up. “With a name like Kyrellis? Isn’t that … what? Greek?”

“You know your linguistics; I’ll give you that.” Kyrellis led Carl into the kitchen and motioned for him to sit at the table. “Who are you, exactly, Carl Abernathy? Have we overlooked a scholar among us?”

“Hardly.” Carl regretted the comment about Kyrellis’s name. And though he knew the man mocked him, he would never let on that he had gone to Berkeley on a scholarship and completed his degree in literature. It didn’t matter, either. That life was a kid’s idealistic dream. Then came Vietnam, heroin, and reality.

“Well, then, let’s get down to business. Why
are
you here?”

Carl reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the folded copies. He was careful and deliberate as he laid them out on the table. “Eighteen seventy-eight Frontier Colt. Seven hundred dollars. May 2004. Harpers Ferry M1842 musket. Twelve hundred. August 2006. Glock Model 23. Three hundred. December 2006.” He went on through a list of twenty guns.

Kyrellis stood perfectly still, listening, eyeing the papers.

“Winchester Grand American—small-gauge. Forty thousand. April of this year.” Carl laid the last sheet down. He stilled his face, preparing the sternest bluff he’d ever delivered. “I have a record of every single firearm. Its price. The date. Its origin. Its serial number.” He looked at Kyrellis. “And its buyer.”

“So you do,” Kyrellis said quietly.

“I want the box. This information stays with me if you give me Silvie’s box.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I go to the police.”

“You know you’ll ruin Hershel, too.”

Carl stared at Kyrellis for a long serious moment, then gave him a simple nod. A flash of Vietnam went through his mind.

Kyrellis reached into his shirt and took the pistol from his holster.

Carl’s dream beside the rice paddy flooded in on him. The oppressive heat.

“You forgot this one.” He held up the gun so that Carl could see it. “Do you remember
this one
?”

That familiar sense of doom, intangible yet overwhelming.

“You called me about it yourself.”

Carl stared at the Taurus semiautomatic. He remembered it. He’d sold it to Kyrellis while Hershel was in the hospital. Ironically, to pay the utilities at Hershel’s house because the accountant wasn’t authorized to handle his personal affairs.

Kyrellis pointed the gun at Carl’s head.

He won’t shoot me here, Carl told himself. Not in his kitchen, sitting at his dinner table. He closed his eyes and thought of Yolanda’s smile, then a lightness, a release. No craving. No relentless urges. Nothing—just a small flash. Then nothing.

Kyrellis stood over Carl Abernathy, afraid to touch him. His breath was pinched and tight. “I’m having a heart attack,” he stuttered as the gun clattered to the floor and skated across the polished linoleum. He grabbed at a side chair and collapsed into it, laying his head and shoulders on the table. “I’m … having … a … heart … attack,” he wheezed.

He closed his eyes and cleared his head. After several minutes, the pains eased, leaving him shaky and ringed in sweat. He peered across the table at the man he’d just shot. The bullet hadn’t exited Carl’s skull. There wasn’t much blood.

Kyrellis hadn’t wanted to do that. He hadn’t planned it. But Hershel Swift’s flunky had proved himself a sly man, after all. The way he’d stated his demands with such cool deliberation; it was clear that he held no allegiance to Swift. He’d obviously been planning this for years to have kept such precise records.

Kyrellis rested his sweaty face against the wooden table. What would he do with the body? This had all gone wrong.

The dead man gurgled and blood suddenly poured from his nose onto the oak surface.

“Oh!” Kyrellis staggered up, his head pounding, and found a dish towel. He lifted the man’s face and shoved the cloth under, watching
it expand in scarlet. He ran his index finger down Carl’s neck, seeking a pulse, but the skin was already cool and clammy.

Kyrellis slid into the chair once again and tried to organize his thoughts. It was a problem that the bullet hadn’t come out the other side. It could be traced. Kyrellis nudged the corpse’s leg with his foot. The bullet would be traced back only to the man who consigned the gun to Hershel and no further, assuming that this man slumped over his kitchen table hadn’t left evidence behind. Even if he hadn’t, this was too close to home. Kyrellis sized up the body, seeing it in pieces.

Something clicked for Kyrellis, seeing Carl’s bruised face. He could tie this back to the fight at the migrant camp. It was his good luck that Carl had been involved, and that it had been both recent and reported. With an immigration raid that was likely this man’s doing, who would question the link?

Kyrellis suffered a new shiver, recalling the way Carl had punctuated the Winchester in the list of guns he’d bought. It was rare, worth more than any gun he’d ever handled. It sold instantly to a private collector he’d been working with. The man paid sixty-two thousand dollars—more than its market value. Kyrellis had naïvely believed that its sale—the money—would bring an end to his troubles. Carl had been more dangerous than Kyrellis ever imagined, walking around with evidence like that. Kyrellis hadn’t thought twice about the man all this time, even though he was well aware of Carl’s involvement in Hershel’s business. Who else might be lurking in the shadows, collecting damning evidence, preparing to blackmail him? It wasn’t about the pictures, that was for damn sure. That was simply a test to see what he could get. Kyrellis knew it would never have stopped there. The man would have moved on to money, and he’d have done so rapidly. Kyrellis composed himself. He needed to clear his thoughts and figure out how to dispose of this body.

Silvie soaked up the sun in a wicker chair on Hershel’s front porch. Billowy gray clouds formed and dissipated in the moody afternoon sky, occasionally stealing away the warmth, then bringing it back again like a sweet gift. She could hear Hershel tinkering with the Porsche, but so far he’d failed to get it running, despite its new tires and battery.

A red-tailed hawk sailed out over the river in search of food, and she studied the long driveway that emerged from the orchard a quarter mile or so from the house. This was a good place to be. She’d see Jacob coming long before he arrived, and she could slip into that same vast orchard that wrapped around the house. From the upstairs bedroom she had seen its southern boundary, where it marched into a wild blackberry thicket that folded into a ravine, then up another slope. Then it was forest and hills as far as she could see. Jacob would never find her.

After a time, Hershel joined her, wiping grease from his hands with a rag that looked as though it had once been a pair of boxer shorts. “Looks like you found a nice spot,” he said. “Mind if I interrupt your solitude?”

“Want me to get you something to drink?”

“No, I’m okay.” He eased into the chair, inspecting his clothes for grease stains.