The Juliet (6 page)

Rigg said, “Well, I’m proud to be in such a distinguished establishment. Is everybody who lives in the Valley famous or something?”

Tony shrugged. “Eventually, yeah. Especially you white guys. If not for the way you live, then for the way you die.”

“Give it a break, Tony. Mr. Dexon just moved here. He bought The Mystery House.”

Tony was just warming up, though. “You know more than half the stories about the Forty-Niners ends with the line, ‘he went out for supplies and was never heard from again.’”

Scottie said, “My partner likes to make it sound like the desert is some great big
Marie Celeste
.”

“Could be, for some,” said Tony. “Just wanted to point out that me, I’m not famous here. You all are. I’m famous in Vegas.”

“Gotcha,” Rigg said. Compared to his partner, the Indian was pretty slick looking, prepared for the cameras. It was like what housewives always squealed when they spotted Rigg at a grocery store or restaurant:
you look just like yourself!
Tony Jackpot was the same, a natural unnatural who knew all eyes were on him and liked it that way. He hadn’t won a major poker tourney in two years, but no one cared. Tony was a star.

Rhys Nash should have been a star, too. He was an amazing athlete, if a little inconsistent, but in every place that Tony was bright and glossy, Rhys Nash was dark and dull. After too many years in Hollywood, Rigg thought about these kinds of things a lot, and he wished he didn’t. It felt womanish.

“So son, why the hell do they call you Scottie?”

“Because no one around here knows Wales exists.”

Rigg raised his glass again. “My former self, Paul Lattanzi, salutes us all. Tony Jackpot, Scottie…what? Do they at least call you Scottie Nash?”

“Not even. Just Scottie”

“Damn. Well here’s to us: Tony Jackpot, Rigg Dexon, and Just Scottie. Three men with frankly ridiculous names foisted upon them by the power of the mob.”

Tony said, “Not unlike the name Death Valley.”

“Price of fame,” Scottie said, as he wiped down the bar and topped off Rigg’s pint. “So what brings you in this morning, Mr. Dexon?”

That odd-looking little gal finally came out of the back, her eyes burning holes right through Rigg. He gave her a wink and answered, “Same as anybody. I’m here for the purty flowers.”

And as soon as he said it, he started to have second thoughts. Did he really want this weird little thing coming up on him? He didn’t have the juice for it, literally.
Why can’t I just leave her to these sun-addled dopes
? Every day of Rigg Dexon’s life had been like a B movie, full of cheap lines. He hadn’t needed a script for years now, it all came so naturally. The automatic cowboy.

Not waiting to gauge the impact of his innuendo, Rigg eased off his stool and stood as tall as he could, directly in the gal’s path. She sure had a queer look in her eye, and it was then he remembered why he’d gone into seclusion in the first place.

“You’re the Nuggetz Prospector,” she said.

“I am,” he admitted.

“And you’re not dead yet.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Willie was still talking about cereal, and she wasn’t ready to stop, not even when Tony tried to turn the subject towards Dexon’s classic films, all of which had terrible names like
Blood Ride
,
Sunset Shooter
, and
Gallows River
.

“I’ve never seen any of those,” she said, prompting an embarrassed look from Scottie.

Dexon wasn’t bothered in the slightest. In fact, he seemed charmed. “Of course you haven’t, darling. You were just a baby.”

By now Willie had taken her watch off, laying it upside down on the bar so she wouldn’t see the time. Then, because Tony and Scottie needed an education, she proceeded to recount every detail of the Nuggetz
promotion: Dexon’s face on the box, the commercials, and most importantly, The Juliet.

“So inside each box of Nuggetz
was a piece of a treasure map,” she said, spreading her hands across the ironwood as if there was a map right in front of her. “And the idea was that you needed to collect as many as possible to make the whole map that, if you read it correctly, would lead you to The Juliet.”

“It’s a powerful mystery,” Dexon confirmed. “Seizes the imagination and never lets go. ‘Specially when you’re a kiddo.”

Willie examined him for a moment. He still looked like that prospector, only a little grayer and little softer. He was shorter than she’d expected, but she’d heard that was true of most actors. “You know, I just realized you look like my Uncle Carl.”

Tony and Scottie looked uncomfortable. Perhaps their orange juice had gone bad, too.

Dexon said, “Is that right?”

“He’s gone a long time now,” she said. In fact, Uncle Carl had keeled over when she was in kindergarten. That was how all the Judys went, keeling.

“Then maybe that’s why you took such a liking to me. Where’re you from, West Virginia? I detect a trace of the holler in your accent.”

“Yes, sir. I came out to join the Parks Service, but it didn’t work out.” Willie hesitated, not sure just how much to say on that subject. “That’s probably your fault, you know. Filling my head with dreams of finding treasure in the desert.” Willie was only trying to be funny, but she heard how sad that sounded.

When the office phone rang, Scottie excused himself to answer it and disappeared into the back. Tony gave Willie the eye and said, “Why do I have a premonition about that phone call, even though I’m not the least bit psychic?” Carter, Willie’s boss, had a habit of calling the Alkali first when he couldn’t find her.

“Tony thinks I’m about to lose my job,” she said to Dexon.

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter.” And it really didn’t. Nothing very interesting ever seemed to happen to her, though she’d been waiting damned patiently. That was the real reason she’d stopped at Shorty’s in the first place. She couldn’t bear the thought of making that trip again, out to Lone Pine and back, over and over, like she was a dull knife trying to slice the world open to see if there was anything interesting inside.

Life is short
was the sort of thing people said when they wanted you to get off your ass and do something, even if it was foolish. Now that Willie was looking into the eyes of Rigg Dexon, it was as if he’d stepped right off the cereal box to say
No, no, no. Life is long. Look at me.
Maybe she was right to wait.

Melanie, the waitress at Shorty’s, had clued her in: Dexon wasn’t your average desert hermit, reading the bible and drinking his days away. He was on a mission, and everybody knew it.

“I want to help you,” Willie said. She touched the actor’s arm. She rarely did things like that.

“Help me? Help me what?”

“Let the man drink in peace,” said Tony.

Willie disliked that tolerant smile of Tony’s, especially since she knew it so well by now. She tilted her head closer to Dexon and said, “I want to help you find The Juliet.”

“Willie!” Tony almost shouted.

Rigg Dexon laughed so hard he began to cough. He set his glass down hard on the bar and gripped its edge as the color drained from his face and veins bulged from his forehead. When the cough subsided, Tony shoved a stack of napkins at the old man.

“For your mouth,” Willie said, looking away while Dexon swabbed away the spittle.

When he had breath again, he said, “I apologize for that.”

Tony asked, “Are you sick, sir?”

Dexon shook his head no, like a dog throwing off water. “You watch too many movies. I’m seventy-four. So are my lungs.”

“It’s the flowers, I’m sure,” Willie said. As she waited respectfully for the man to recover his color, she waved off Tony’s disapproving stare. They’d had this discussion before, about her not creeping out the customers. Tony liked Willie well enough, but not quite the same way Scottie did. Tony was always waiting for her to fail so he could wag his finger at her, whereas Scottie was always waiting for her to fall. So he could catch her, she assumed.

“Mr. Dexon,” she said. “What do you think about us working together? It’s true, isn’t it? You’re here to find The Juliet.”

“What do I think,” said Dexon, still clearing his throat a bit. He patted her knee and had been doing so on and off, first as a way of flirting with her, but now it seemed like he was just trying to keep his balance. She noticed one of his hands trembled slightly. “What I think is that you are delightful.”

Tony leaned his elbows on the bar, bringing himself level with Willie. “That’s a no, Willie. The best bad news you’ll get today.”

* * *

Rigg found himself fascinated by the subtle shades of Willie’s disappointment. He’d expected, from the passion of her proposition, that she would try another tack, but no. She seemed to be one of those people who were nourished, albeit poorly, by defeat. Enduring folk, the defeated. It occurred to Rigg that he had not thought about death for several minutes.

Willie Judy was a tonic.

“So,” he said to her, “What’s
your
secret identity?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I wasn’t always Rigg Dexon, Tony wasn’t always Tony Jackpot. Even your man Scottie has a past that is very unlike his present. Who were you before you became Willie Judy?”

This was an invitation for her to tell her life story, Rigg’s go-to, no-fail strategy for driving any conversation out of the muck. Everyone loved to talk about themselves, didn’t they?

Willie seemed to be thinking hard about the question. Too hard. Eventually she said, “I’ve always been me. I’m not anything else, yet.”

Just then Scottie hollered out from the back. “Willie, you need to come talk to Carter.”

“Except maybe I just became unemployed.” Willie stood and gave Rigg an unexpected, quick hug around the shoulders. “Don’t leave,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

As soon as she left, Rigg noticed the beer stopped working. He decided it was time to go. “She with a fella? You or Scottie?”

“Crazy’s not my type,” said Tony. “Scottie’s fond of her though, at least the thought of her. I haven’t seen him make progress.”

“Ha. Dreams are good company. I’d like to settle up, hit the road.”

“Before she comes back, right,” Tony said. “The drinks are on us.”

Rigg politely declined. “I always pay my own way.”

Tony tried to get the actor to start a tab.

Rigg declined again, saying, “At my age I’ve become ‘commitment-phobic.’” It was a term he’d heard a much younger actor use with great seriousness on a television interview, and Rigg thought it was one of the funniest things he’d ever heard.

“Look, you’ve got to come back soon,” Tony said. “I’ll personally make sure you aren’t disturbed again.”

“I thought Willie Judy was very sweet.”

“Sweet? Now that’s proof that you’re still a bad ass.”

Still
a bad ass. The things people said once you passed sixty. Rigg patted his jacket, making sure he had his jeep keys. He had at least six pockets to check and every one jangled or crinkled when he touched it. What you got for a grand was a jacket that let you tote a bottle or a gun in without ruining the line.

Rigg was stalling, thinking about Willie. He pushed a twenty and a five over to Tony. “What do you think she’ll do now?”

“Short term, Scottie and I can give her work here through Mother’s Day, but we’re the only ones that would. She’s run through her options.” The gambler was doing his best not to say that Willie Judy was a loser. “Don’t get me wrong, I love her like a sister, but long term, I hope she goes back home to West Virginia. You have to have a certain vision to make it out here.”

“It sounds like she did, once upon a time,” said Rigg, reminded of his own lost plot. “That Parks Service job. What happened there?”

“Couple of poor judgment calls. She didn’t make it out of probation.” Tony lowered his voice even though there was no one to overhear. “We’re not supposed to talk about it, but she might have killed a dog, thinking it was a sick coyote. And there was an injured flammulated owl she lost track of when she was supposed to be rehabilitating it.”

Those were sobering details. “And then she took the job she just lost?”

“Shuttling car parts across the valley for Carter’s Auto out in Beatty. There were a couple of less glamorous gigs in between.”

Rigg sighed. “She’s not a very lucky person, is she?”

“Luck is a scaffolded phenomenon, Mr. Dexon,” Tony said. “My field of expertise. Now, if you let me pour you another short one—
on the house
—I’ll tell you all about quantum uncertainty. What do you say?”

Four months ago, Rigg would have enjoyed bullshitting with the gambler about cosmic chances, but these days he was not so glib. In fact he trembled under the majesty of death and other phenomena he only barely understood—luck being one of those.

Somewhere in the back rooms of the Alkali, Willie Judy was absorbing her luck, with flinty grace, no doubt.

Rigg said, “I’ll have to come back for the full lecture, but in the meantime—” he reached into an inside pocket for a pen. He wanted to leave an autograph that the proprietors of
Lily’s Lounge
could pin to the wall, but crossed left when he should have crossed right and withdrew a wrinkled, trifold document.

He laughed and showed the papers to Tony Jackpot. “You recognize this, don’t you?”

Tony sure did. A lot of fellows he played with came to the table with their docs: pinks, boat registrations, and sometimes land deeds.

“Let’s make some luck, then,” said Dexon.

* * *

By the time Willie and Scottie returned, Dexon was gone. Tony pushed the papers across the polished ironwood bar. “It’s the deed to Parcel 68 on Apollo Camp Road. That’s the legal name for Goud’s Trail. Now signed over to one Wilhemina Charlotte Judy.”

The deed to The Mystery House. Willie said, “This can’t be real.”

“It’s real,” said Tony. “Unless you tell people I signed your name for you.”

“Looks like you notarized it too,” Scottie said. “Surely he’ll return once he realizes he needs a place to sleep.”