No Man's Land (23 page)

He shook his head. “Maybe it’s got something to do with the
father walking out on them or something, but there’s a bond between
those two that’s positively . . .” He searched for a word.

“. . . positively unhealthy,” he said finally.

“You mean like . . . ?”

“Let’s leave it at that,” he said.

She was relieved. Others would have taken the opportunity to delve
into the subject. His refusal gave her pause to wonder about her
earlier suspicions.

“What about Corso?” he wanted to know.

“He left the Phoenix office in a motor home with Melanie Harris
. . . you know, the host of that TV show
American Manhunt
.”

He nodded that he knew.

“We’ve located the motor home in Scottsdale. They’re both
registered at the Phoenician Resort. I should have word within the
next half hour or so.”

He raised his eyebrows. “A tryst?”

“Separate rooms. In which they slept separately.”

He seemed disappointed. “Let’s do it,” he said.

• • • “What happened to your hand?”

“And you’d been doing so well,” Corso said. “Just chatting
along. Not running your reporter number on me at all.”

“It’s in the blood,” Melanie said with a laugh.

“What say you keep it up.”

“But I’ve got the number one interview in America sitting
right across from me slurping coffee. How could I resist?”

“Do us both a favor. Resist.”

As she laughed again, the warm desert breeze lifted her hair,
illuminating the highlights. The double French doors, separating the
private balcony from the main dining room, eased open, allowing the
buzz of muted conversations to wash outside. Corso stifled a frown.
One of the joys of places like the Phoenician was that the staff
generally had impeccable timing, arriving when they were needed but
otherwise fading into the background. The waiter had peeked out five
minutes ago. Again now was too much.

Wasn’t the waiter though. It was Oscar, the concierge. Oscar was
Swiss and had mastered the art of patrician disinterest. Today,
however, he looked a bit nonplussed. He nodded politely at each of
them, then closed the doors behind him.

“You have . . . er . . . some guests, Mr. Corso.”

“Guests?”

“Official guests.”

“Official as in badges?”

“Exactly, sir.” Before Corso could ask, he said. “FBI, sir.”

“How many?”

“Eight, ten, a dozen. Perhaps more. They’re blighting the
lobby in those dreadful suits. They’re waiting in your rooms for
both of you. They’ve also let themselves into Ms. Harris’s
recreational vehicle.” His tone implied disapproval of such
recreation even more than FBI tailors.

Corso thought it over. “As a citizen and a taxpayer I believe a
person should assist our law enforcement agencies in any way
possible, don’t you, Oscar?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“To the extent that your research among the staff has revealed
that I left early this morning.”

“Yes sir.”

“Asking that you forward my meager belongings to the usual
Seattle address.”

“And the young lady?” Oscar inquired.

“Hopefully, Oscar, the young lady is going to do what she does
best.”

“Very good, sir,” he said with a short bow. “Uh . . . by the
by, sir, it might be best if you exited via the kitchen. I’ll
inform Fritz. There will be no problem.”

“Thank you, Oscar. As usual, my visit here has been a pleasure.”

“I will inform the manager, sir.”

Corso waited for the soft sound of the doors latching.

“You want that interview?” Corso asked. When she didn’t
answer immediately, he went on. “The interview all America has been
waiting for. The man on the inside of the prison break. The perfect
closer for this Arizona sojourn you’ve been on.”

“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t going to be free.”

“Nothing’s free.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to get me out of here.”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You heard the
man. They’re waiting in my trailer.”

“So, go to the trailer. Tell them we had dinner last night, then
said good-bye. You’ve got no idea where I am right now and what are
they doing in your trailer without a warrant anyway. Get huffy with
them. They’ll leave in a heartbeat.”

“And then?”

“Leave the door unlocked. They’ll have to consult. I’ll get
in while they’re figuring out what to do next.”

“What if they see you sneaking in?”

“Then I get a ride downtown. And you go on your way.”

“Why don’t you just see what it is they want?”

“They had me in custody all day yesterday. This is something
new. With this kind of manpower expenditure, whatever it is can’t
be good.”

“They’ll follow us.”

“Yes, they will,” Corso said. “For a while.” He paused.

“About the time you get on the freeway and start following the
signs to L.A., they’re gonna lose interest in a big hurry. Six
hours of desert isn’t what they’ve got in mind.”

“And then what?”

“And then you have me all to yourself, all the way to L.A.”

“And you’ll answer my questions? Not give me that snotty stuff
you usually throw at the press.”

He held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

She grabbed his fingers. “You’re the least likely Boy Scout on
the planet.”

He shrugged. Left his fingers locked in hers. “What do you say?”

She didn’t hesitate. “It’s a deal,” she said, letting go
of his hand. Corso got to his feet. “I’ll meet you outside.”

Melanie took a last sip of her coffee and stood up. “At some
point, I’m going to need to get some video.”

“When we get to L.A. I promise.”

“Ooooh,” she mocked. “I can’t believe it. That elusive
heartthrob, Frank Corso, baring his soul on
American Manhunt
.
We’ll pull a twenty share.”

“You don’t know how disappointing it is to hear my charms
reduced to mere numbers.”

She laughed again. “Somehow, Mr. Corso, I think you’ll get
over it.”

Corso threw twenty bucks on the table for the waiter and opened
door on the right.

Melanie passed by close enough for him to smell her scent. Some
version of Chanel. He was sure of it. Coco maybe. She never looked
back as she sashayed across the dining room, turning heads all the
way, and disappeared from view. Corso turned left and walked quickly
through the door to the kitchen. A pink-cheeked specimen in a
spotless white uniform nodded politely and pointed the way. Corso
returned the nod and followed the finger through the bustling
kitchen, out past the freezers to the loading dock and finally to the
staff parking lot behind the main building. By the time he made his
way to where they’d parked the trailer, the fireworks were mostly
over. Melanie was standing in the doorway hands on hips. Corso
couldn’t hear what was being said, but the body language told him
the FBI agents were in full apology mode. Corso watched from behind a
palm tree, forty yards away as they made their way around the back of
the RV and disappeared.

He didn’t hesitate. The minute they were out of view, he went
skipping through the shrubbery and tropical flowers, moving quickly
from tree to tree. Melanie saw him coming and stepped aside. He
jumped up and stayed low, duck-walking beneath the windows all the
way to the back. She closed the door and locked it. They waited.

Corso sat on the floor with his back against the bathroom door.
Melanie bent over and peered out the side window.

“They’re sitting in a burgundy Ford about four rows down,”
she announced. “One of them’s talking into his collar.”

“Let’s go,” Corso said.

Melanie walked up front and belted herself into the driver’s
seat.

“L.A., here we come,” she said.

On the TV a man in a white apron was showing folks how to stick a
turkey into some kinda little oven that collected the grease in the
bottom as it turned the bird round and round. “Just set it and
forget it,” he kept saying every time he stuffed something else
into the contraption. Got the audience to shout it along with him
too. Never seen anybody so damn happy about cookin’ something. Guy
had a grin on him, you’d think he won the damn lottery or
something. Heidi wished she could change the channel, maybe find some
cartoons, except she couldn’t be sure whether what’shisname was
watching or not. He was sure enough staring at the screen, but with
this guy that didn’t necessarily mean he was taking any of it in.
Whatever his name was had his own inner TV set he looked at most of
the time. Rolled his eyes back into his head and went off to wherever
the hell it was he went to. All he did was sit there and play with
his guns. Taking them apart and putting them together over and over.
Didn’t have to look at them neither. He could do it from memory and
the feel in his hands. Scary.

She’d tried her best to get his attention. Washed out her pissy
undies and dress in the sink, then threw ’em on the radiator to
dry. No Man’s Land She’d spent the past four hours parading
around the motel room in a towel not much bigger than a washcloth and
he never so much as twitched an eyeball in her direction. First man
she ever met wasn’t the least bit interested in seeing her naked.
If he hadn’t been so damned crazy it would have hurt her feelings
for sure. She was trying to decide whether to discard the towel
altogether, change the channel, or more likely, both, when the
channel up and changed itself to a public service bulletin.
Blond-haired woman standing behind one of those wooden speech-making
things. Half a dozen men in suits stood behind her on the platform.
The graphic read FBI SPECIAL AGENT LINDA WESTERMAN. She was goin’
on about how the various cops were all cooperating together like one
big happy family when the pictures appeared at the bottom of the
screen. Harry and her and Kehoe and Captainman, right there on the TV
screen big as life. She hated her picture. Made her look like she had
no upper lip. His picture didn’t look much like him neither, but if
you used a little imagination, you could see him in it. The label
said his name was Timothy Driver. Used to be some kinda Trident
submarine captain. Said he was sentenced to double forever for offing
his wife and her lover nine years ago. Said he was armed and
dangerous. She almost laughed out loud. Armed and dangerous? Hell . .
. they didn’t know the half of it.

Driver set the shotgun on the bed, felt around and came up with
the remote control and turned up the volume. The Westerman woman said
they figured the fugitives . . . that’s what she called them,
fugitives . . . were headed for Canada ’cause Canada wouldn’t
send nobody back to the U.S. to be executed. Asked everybody to be on
the lookout and to call the number at the bottom of the screen if
they had anything to report. And that was that. Next thing you know
she’s legging it off the stage and they’re back with that
grinning yahoo stuffing a pork roast into that same dumb-ass machine.

“When it gets dark, I’ll be leaving,” he said. The words
felt like somebody dragged a rusty nail down her spine. She made like
she didn’t understand. “You mean like us . . . right?”

“I have to go alone. It’s my calling.”

“Oh please,” she said quickly. “Don’t leave me alone. I’m
not good about being left alone. I’ve got issues.”

“We’re born alone. We die alone,” he said solemnly.

“But not here . . . not now,” she said. “Right?”

When he didn’t answer, she leaned closer to him, allowing the
top of the towel to fall into her lap. For the first time, he dropped
his gaze from her face and looked at her breasts. She watched his
Adam’s apple bob up and down . . . suppressed a smile. “My mama
left us when I was five. Her name was Rose and she was very
beautiful. School sent me to counseling over it. Everybody said it
wasn’t my fault. Said it was between her and my daddy. Wasn’t
nothing I coulda done about it.” She shrugged. “It’s probably
true,” she said. “For somebody somewhere’s else.” She paused
and looked him in the eye for the first time. His eyes were black and
cold as a pair of rivets. “For me though . . . I still figure it
musta been something I done . . . or something I shoulda done and
that maybe . . . if one little thing had been different . . . if
maybe we hadn’t found just one thing we coulda done to make her
life a little better . . . then you know maybe she woulda stayed.”

His steel gaze seemed to bore a hole right through her skull.
Almost against her will, she began talking. “You know . . . like a
short story I read back in high school, where they had like a time
machine. And about these white hunter guys who paid a lot of money to
go on a safari back to dinosaur times. Except they had to be careful
not to touch anything while they were back in the past lest . . . you
know . . . they screw things up or something.”

She became more animated, waving her hands around as she spoke.
“And like somebody, by mistake, steps on a butterfly . . . just
like one tiny butterfly . . . and when they get back everything is
different . . . different government . . . different everything . . .
all because of just one little butterfly that got stepped on way back
when.”

He was looking at her now. His gaze was empty and pitiless.

“You know what I’m talking about?” she asked. “I’m
talking about abandonment issues here.”

“You can’t mess with the river,” he said in a low voice.
“The river goes on with you or without you. It doesn’t care. It
just goes on being a river.”

“Not rivers, man . . . butterflies.”

“It’s the same,” he said. “Everything’s on its way back
to where it came from. Some of it makes it all the way to the ocean.
Some of it falls along the way.”

She jumped to her feet and stamped a foot. The violent movement
sent the towel to the floor. She felt a rush of blood in her cheeks.
Then watched the ghost of desire wash across his face. She squared
her shoulders and took a step forward, nearly putting her pubis in
his face. “You can’t just leave me here,” she whined in her
best little girl voice. “I don’t even know where we are.” She
edged even closer. “I could make things good for you,” she
whispered.