Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (14 page)

    
As he
scanned the surface, Raszer came across one epigram in faint purple that he
found especially wistful: T
hink
L
ovely
T
houghts
—P.P.
It made him smile, but the smile faded when he noticed an
accompanying arrow pointing toward the bridge and realized that the attribution
was to Peter Pan. “Thinking lovely thoughts” was how the Darling children had
gained the power of flight, and Raszer couldn’t help but wonder if the Bridge
to Nowhere was not also a lovers’ leap.

    
As he
turned back toward the trailer, a distant smear of color caught his eye. In the
far canyon indicated by the path marker and just visible at the outer limits of
his sight, rain had begun to fall again, refracting the sunlight into a gentle
arc of yellow, blue, and some deeper hue that appeared to span the gorge.
Evanescing within the rainbow was a frail structure of stone and steel, somehow
less real than the mirage that concealed it.

    
For
those disinclined to believe in “signs” of any sort, Raszer’s sense that the
bridge had utilized an optical effect in order to reveal itself to him might
suggest that a stay at the Betty Ford Center or the Menninger Clinic was in
order. But these were people who’d never opened a book to the very passage they
were looking for.

    
He
accelerated his pace as he neared Johnny’s trailer. It was late, the Coronado
was another treacherous two or three miles up the road, and he’d seen all he
wanted to see here, at least for today. In truth, he was anxious to leave. If
he hadn’t brushed his head against the Japanese lantern or turned to see the
gold string hanging down, he’d have been on his way. As it was, he had no
choice but to stop.

    
There
was something inside the soggy, misshapen paper lantern, a dark shape nestled
against its translucent skin. The knotted gold string—about three inches long
and resembling the drawstring of a fine jewelry bag—was the cord asking to be
pulled, the party favor with the fortune inside. But what might be delivered
into his hands, Raszer couldn’t guess.

    
The
lantern resisted at first; its wire frame narrowed at the mouth and appeared to
have been squeezed even tighter to secure its cache. Once Raszer had widened
it, though, the contents slipped out with a speed and heft that made him jump
back. What he held at arm’s length was a small, wet pouch of midnight blue
velvet, embroidered in Persian style with the same gold thread used to make the
drawstring. It felt like about eight ounces, but allowing for the water,
whatever was inside would weigh in around six. Raszer held it up to the light.
The needlework was elegant, the pattern abstract and unrevealing. A dozen
possibilities raced through Raszer’s mind.
Diamonds
?
Iraqi jewels pilfered from a mullah’s
private stash
?
A sacred artifact from
the ancient city of Babylon, or one of the ‘weird little statues’ Aquino
mentioned
?
Dope
?
A roll of bills
?

    
Whatever
it was, his impulse was to obey the instruction of both instinct and police
procedure and leave the pouch securely tied until it sat on Aquino’s desk.
Continuing to hold the dripping sack away from his torso, Raszer made his way
slowly back down the muddy path to his car and set the evidence on the
passenger-side floor mat to drain.

    
East
Fork Road ran almost level with the San Gabriel River and mirrored its every
bend. With the rains, the usual trickle had swollen to a bankless torrent of
whitewater, with the two-lane road’s narrow shoulder acting as an uncertain
levee. Other states might have preemptively closed the road, but this was
outback California, whose motto could well be “Proceed at your own risk.”

    
Every
year, hundreds of teenagers did just that, stopping to hop boulders or pose for
hero pictures, and every year, a few of them drowned. Only a mudslide or a
blizzard would prompt the Highway Patrol and Forest Service to drag out the
barricades, and even this was controversial, for, remarkably, people
lived
up here. They lived in mobile
homes long since rendered immobile, in ramshackle cabins propped on the slopes
amid stands of Jeffrey pine, andthey lived—though not freely—in the confines of
State Department of Corrections Fire Camp No. 39.

    
Since
his time was running short, Raszer drove past the paved bridge leading to the
fire camp without much regard, except to note that the forested riverbank
prison seemed—at least from his distance—not all that unpleasant. He wondered
if it took fleecing some grandma of her life savings to rate such easy time,
but then reasoned that white-collar criminals would make lousy firemen. They
were more likely to be the first out of a burning building.

    
Beyond
the prison compound, the river widened into shallows where ridges and bars of
scree and silt diffracted the rushing water into a dozen currents flowing at
different rates. Amid these were hip-booted fisherman—not weekend anglers, but
weary hunter-gatherers with nicotine-cured skin only a shade or two off from
that of their soiled yellow ponchos, and small, mostly Latino children playing
on the muddy banks in patent leather shoes and lacy dresses, waiting for Daddy
to reel in dinner.

    
Just
ahead, another bridge spanned the San Gabriel, this one leading to what looked
like a pioneer village. In the rain and mud and darkening mist, it resembled a
prospector’s camp removed from time, if somehow entirely in place. Raszer
glanced down at the Post-it note on his instrument panel. Aquino’s directions
were a little unclear about the next turn, so he decided—as much in fascination
as out of disorientation—to consult the locals. He crossed the bridge and
passed under a large, painted billboard announcing the Follows Camp, est. 1862,
then proceeded past a R
esidents
O
nly
sign to
a small parking lot adjacent to a raised picnic area and a rustic log structure
with a Miller beer sign lit up in its window.

    
He
stepped out and glanced around, suddenly very much aware that the roar of the
river blanketed even the cries of the children playing nearby. The settlement
buildings came in browns so darkened by damp that the most distant cabin was
barely distinct from the clay soil around it. It was both comforting and
dismal, as such places can be: comforting because it had the rainy-day smell
and smoked patina of an eternal summer camp; dismal because it was evident that
for the wary souls who eyed Raszer from its perimeters, this squatters’ village
was home.

    
A plaque
beside the picnic area informed him that, indeed, the Follows Camp had been
established as a gold-mining community and was now open to families on a
year-round or seasonal basis. The full-timers, Raszer supposed, must be an
intrepid lot by the slack standards of twenty-first-century America. The
nearest supermarket was a good thirty minutes away; a trip to the mall would
amount to an expedition.

    
Raszer
flinched. Standing beside a picnic table not twelve feet away was an old-timer
in stained overalls, with broken, caramel-colored teeth and a yellowish beard
that came to a point at his solar plexus. He wore a misshapen brown hat and
highwater boots. Raszer sensed that the man had been there in the fog, watching
him, from the moment of his arrival, as still as a mule deer in the brush.

    
“Hello
there,” Raszer called out.

    
“Hello
there,” the bearded statue came back.

    
“Can you
point me to the old Coronado Lodge?” Raszer asked. “With this rain and fog, I’m
afraid I may wind up in Palmdale.”

    
“Won’t
get to Palmdale on this road,” the man creaked. “Won’t even get to Manker
Flats. She’s closed above four thousand.”

    
Raszer
waited for him to continue, but apparently the man had retained only the last
part of his question, and now hung there in suspended animation, rain dripping
from his brim. “And the Coronado?” Raszer recapitulated.

    
“The
Coronado?” he exclaimed, in the way that cranks have of making a question a
reproach. “Whatcha want up thur? It’s a ghost town. Closed since the big
washout in ’38.”

    
“1938,”
said Raszer, and looked around at the erosion the rain had caused to the
surrounding slopes. “Was it worse than this year?”

    
“Hell,
yes!” his informant barked. “Took out the new road. Up at the Bridge to
Nowhere.
That
would’ve gotten you to
Palmdale. That was the plan, anyways.”

    
“I’ll be
damned,” said Raszer. “I didn’t know that.” And he added, for safety’s sake,
“But you
can
still get to the
Coronado, right?”

    
The
ancient gold-digger, which was surely what he appeared to be, squinted hard and
asked, “
Why
?”

    
Raszer
operated on the share-and-share-alike principle. Caginess would get him nowhere
with witnesses, and certainly not with locals. “I’m a private detective,” he
said. “I’m looking for a lost girl . . . and maybe some new ghosts. Can you
help me?”

    
The man
cackled. “
God
, I love that Mickey
Spillane. Y’ever read ’im?”

    
“I’ve
run across his stuff,” said Raszer. “His guy gets more girls than I do.”

    
Rumpelstiltskin
looked him over. “Doubt that,” he said. “Unless yer a fairy.”

    
“If I
don’t get up to the Coronado pretty soon, I may turn into a pumpkin.”

    
The old
man chortled and aimed his right arm northeast. “G’wup to just before the Camp
Williams trailer park ’n make a sharp right on Glendora Mountain Road. Almost
as soon as y’do, there’ll be an old fire road on yer left, goin’ into Cattle
Canyon. It’s still got a little pavement at the bottom, ’cause it was the main
road to the lodge for the fancy folks, back in the ’20s.” He twirled an index
finger in the air. “Shit . . . bootleggers, movie stars, ladies of the night!
Use to be able to get drunk
and
laid
up here for a fin. Anyhow, you’ll follow that road as far as”—he glanced
dismissively at Raszer’s Avanti, then just as doubtfully at his shoes—”as far
as your wheels will take you. Might have to hoof it a bit. When you can see the
snow line, you’re there.”

    
Raszer
looked down at his mud-caked boots and indicated the little camp store across
the lot. “I don’t suppose they’d sell me any galoshes over there?”

    
“Nope,”
said the old man. “I’ll sell ya mine for a sawbuck.”

    
“Thanks,”
Raszer said, “but I think you’d miss them.” He started to get into the car,
then paused. “I take it you heard about those boys who got killed up there a
year or so ago. The kids who broke into the lodge for that big dance party.”

    
“Heard
about
it!” he exclaimed. “Hell, mister,
I live up in the topmost cabin, and those fools with their music had my heart
jumpin’ from two canyons away.”

    
“Ever
hear anything about the men who did the killing?” Raszer asked. “I know the
police and the FBI were up here, so y’might know the killers drove a black
Lincoln.”

    
“No,
sir. Keep to myself.”

    
“Uh-huh,”
said Raszer, then paused,because the man’s jaw was still moving.

    
“But
when ya get up there,” he said, “sniff around the old buggy sheds out back the
place. There’s an old squatter named J.Z. A fella I used to dig with. He used
to make his crib in the sheds. Could be he saw something. If he’s still alive.
You never know.”

    
Raszer
gave his new friend a nod. “Thanks,” he said. He fished out his keys and set
one muddy boot in the car. “Say,” he added, “is there still gold in these
mountains?”

    
“Sure,
yeah,” said the man. “But I lost my nose for it.”

    
“About
that squatter,” said Raszer. “Did you tell the police or the feds?”

    
The man
chuckled. “They never bothered to ask.”

    
Almost
as soon as he’d closed the door, Raszer became aware of a sweet, heavy scent
with a faintly putrid undertone. The little velvet sack, sitting right in the
path of the heat vent, had begun to exude aromatic traces of myrrh, musk, and patchouli.

    
By the
time Raszer had hiked his last yard, it was nearly dusk. There was barely
enough light to reflect yellow from the police tape still draped on the
Coronado’s barricaded doors and between two trees up the road—the spot,
evidently, where the killing had been done. It was colder than he’d expected.
The snow line was indeed close. A harsh, wet wind scooped out the canyon, and
the uppermost branches of a few of the taller pines on the property were
flocked with ice. Raszer felt an ache in his chest.