To Sleep Gently

To Sleep Gently-Zelazny-2 To Sleep Gently Trent Zelazny Published by Crossroad Press Copyright 2011 by Trent Zelazny ...

Author: Trent Zelazny

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To Sleep Gently-Zelazny-2

To Sleep Gently Trent Zelazny

Published by Crossroad Press Copyright 2011 by Trent Zelazny Cover Art by Sascha Rybinski LICENSE NOTES This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS BOOKS BY TRENT ZELAZNY NOVELLAS: Shadowboxer A Crack in Melancholy Time


This one is for Mike and Serge, who can still find it in their hearts to put up with me.


A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. —John Barrymore And the darkness of our bedroom is soon Full of the fallen shadows of our failures. —William H. Gass Sleep, Those little slices of Death How I loathe them. —Edgar Allen Poe


To Sleep Gently


Chapter One

“Spare some change?” Whirlwinds of common everyday activity now uncommon, difficult to comprehend, and swirling about his every side like dreams one can’t awaken from. Surrealism painted in realism or the other way around or some such thing. The world was still going. Just like clockwork. It hadn’t stopped five years ago, as he’d wondered at times. Almost as he’d hoped. It just moved along, not giving a moment’s thought to whether he was in it or not. The world at large didn’t care and it especially didn’t give a rat’s ass about someone like him. “Spare some change?” Dempster regarded the shaggy bum, pants in ragged threads, shoes like


opened cans and a coat with the collar torn and buttons missing. He smelled like raw fish and raw sewage, and the look in his eyes annoyed Dempster, who reached into his pocket, fumbled around for a few seconds, came out with nothing, and placed the emptiness into the man’s grimy hand. As he walked away, he heard the bum call him something that sounded like French but wasn’t. Hell with him. Dempster tuned out the fading vulgarities. A minute later, at the other end of the block, a recent Lincoln Town Car, black and clean and shiny, with heavily tinted windows and a man emerging from the driver’s side, caught Dempster’s attention. The man, dressed nice and wearing sunglasses, waved at him. Dempster did not wave back. He was still too far away to recognize whoever it was, and still overwhelmed by everything around him. The hustle and bustle of the outside world still had him entranced. Even a little disoriented. When the man found that he wasn’t acknowledged, he removed his sunglasses, walked around the car, and met Dempster on the sidewalk with an extended hand. Dempster studied the hand but didn’t take it. He looked into the man’s familiar eyes as he searched his memory, trying to place him. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” the man said. His voice was lighthearted, as friendly as his wave had been. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to meet


you, but you know how it goes. You plan on doing one thing, and ten other things get in the way to make sure it doesn’t happen.” “No one was supposed to meet me,” Dempster said. “Who the hell are you?” “Don’t you remember me?” Dempster didn’t answer, just held a level stare on him. The man laughed, but unlike when he spoke, it wasn’t genuine. It was guarded, covering something beneath it. “You haven’t changed much since I last saw you,” he said, and took a step back and the smile dimmed. “Throw some more hair on this face,” he said. Then he made what Dempster realized was the man’s signature double clack of the tongue. It all came back then, like watching a movie one used to have memorized but hasn’t seen in years. “Aw, hell,” he said with a growing smile, “Charlie Powers.” This time it was Dempster who initiated the handshake. “It’s been over five damn years since I saw your sorry ass. How the hell are you?” “Terrific. I’m doing just fine.” “You shaved your beard.” “My wife didn’t like it.” “And I guess you got married.” “Yeah, to a woman named Willow. We met at a mutual friend’s party, but she was involved with some guy. Told me that night she was pretty sure he was about to get rid of her. Two weeks later I ran into her at a drugstore


and it turned out he had. The rest is history.” “Congratulations.” “A year and a half late, but thanks.” Charlie looked around the busy sidewalk, then gestured to the car. “Come on,” he said. “This is no place to catch up. Hop in. I wanna talk to you. Freddy wants to talk to you, too.” “What about?” “We’ll chat in the car. Don’t you have a bag or a suitcase or anything?” “I was traveling light when they picked me up,” Dempster said. “And the warden hasn’t even started building the shopping center he promised us.”

2

Charlie pulled the Lincoln into a long brick driveway. The architectural design of Freddy Skeele’s new place—7200 square feet of luxury situated on just over five acres—was hard to pinpoint. Postmodern for sure, but it also rang subtly of Mission Revival. The overhanging eaves and exposed rafters almost seemed out of place but weren’t. They somehow managed to fit


perfectly. It was the lake and the ducks bobbing about in it that grabbed Dempster’s full attention. “That’s right,” Charlie said as he switched off the engine. “The guy even has ducks now.” “Looks like he’s been doing pretty well for himself.” “Freddy’s always done well for himself,” Charlie said. “Now he’s just doing better.” They walked up the pathway. Dempster took the opportunity to take in the beauty of the land around him. It was nice to know that trees still grew, water still ran, and ducks hadn’t been a figment of his imagination. “Some say a duck’s quack doesn’t echo,” Dempster said. “What’s that?” “A duck’s quack doesn’t have much high frequency, and high frequencies bounce better.” “I’ll trust you on that,” Charlie said. The front door opened before they reached it. A tall, portly, good-looking man with gray at the sides of his head beamed a warm smile and opened his arms. “Jack Dempster, goddamn it’s good to see you.” “Hey, Freddy. How are you?” “Come in, come in.” He moved to the side, and when Dempster entered, Freddy put his arm around his shoulders. “You look good. I mean that, you


really look great. Prison obviously wasn’t entirely bad to you.” “It wasn’t anything other than dull,” Dempster said. “Well, welcome back, my friend.” “Thanks.” A swift head gesture to the room. “Nice place.” “Bought it not long after Charlie’s wedding. Hired someone to do some renovations. Took them longer than I would have liked, but they did a nice job. Finished just a little over a month ago.” “That how the Mission Revival stuff came in?” “Get out.” Freddy Skeele beamed again. “I didn’t know you knew architecture.” “Not a lot,” Dempster said, “but I had five years to read about things.” “I’m glad you took advantage of the time to educate yourself.” “Not much choice. There wasn’t anything else to do. I don’t go for basketball, and most of the other inmates were assholes, so I pretty much kept to myself. Thanks for those paperbacks, by the way.” “My pleasure. Least I could do. Glad you read them. Hope you enjoyed them.” “I did.” “Good. Well, let’s settle down. Take a load off. I bet you could use a drink.” He led Dempster down an impressive corridor to a large living room with natural cherry floors, walls of windows overlooking the lake, and two skylights.


Beneath one skylight was a full bar, where Charlie was already fixing drinks. “What would you like?” “How about some bourbon.” “You got it.” Freddy offered him a seat. The chairs were high class too, as was the cherry coffee table in front of him, which Charlie set Dempster’s bourbon on. From times long past he knew that Freddy only bought the good stuff. He sat and contemplated the booze for a good long while before picking it up. Half a decade had gone by since he’d last had a real drink, and he felt something very important about the moment. Freddy and Charlie sat quietly, patient, giving him the peace and time he needed for whatever ritual it was he was doing in his head. Dempster raised the glass and took a sip. It burned his throat, slashed down through his innards like fire. Damn but it was good. Instantly his body relaxed. He felt calmer. A wonderful experience. One he’d waited five years too long for. Drawing the glass from his lips, he looked at it and smiled, then took a larger sip, and looked at Freddy. “So how’d you know I was getting out today?” “Demp, I might sometimes be out of touch, but I don’t forget about friends. You think I had no concern for your well being?” “I never said anything of the sort.” “I pay attention to what’s important. A buddy of mine is being released,


you better believe I got that marked on my calendar.” Dempster took another sip. He eased back in his chair, nodded to acknowledge what Freddy had said, then gestured with his glass to Charlie. “Charlie tells me you might be interested in hiring me for a job.” Freddy nodded. “You have anything lined up yet?” “Not a damn thing. But to be perfectly honest, I’ve been torn for some time now if I really wanna get back into the same line of work I was in before.” “Oh?” “Maybe it’s because I’d finally blundered and gotten picked up, I dunno. But it occurs to me sometimes that maybe I should do something like go back to school, get myself a degree and get a normal, less erratic job. Maybe blundering was an unconscious way of telling myself to get out of this stuff.” “Come on, Demp, you’re one of the best there is. How seriously do you think about this?” “Eh, here and there. I’d first have to get my high school equivalency, and for whatever reason the thought of that makes me sick.” “How old are you now?” Freddy asked. Dempster sneered in jest. “You know it’s not polite to ask people that.” “Come on, what, thirty-four, thirty-five?” “Sure, somewhere in there will be fine.” “And you didn’t finish high school and you’ve never held a legitimate job in your life.”


“I think you might be overrating the everyday workforce, Freddy.” “And now,” Freddy went on, ignoring him, “in addition, you’re also an excon. Five years for armed robbery. A felony.” Dempster drew another sip from his glass, then another and drained it. He turned the glass upside down to prove to himself that it was truly empty, then asked, “Mind if I fix myself another?” “Help yourself.” “Thanks.” He got up from his seat. “And while I do,” he said, “why don’t you tell me about this job you have in mind.” “Sure,” Freddy said. “You ever been to Santa Fe?” “New Mexico?” He filled the glass practically to the top. “Can’t say that I have. A friend of mine lives there, though. Haven’t seen him in years.” “It’s a lovely city. Not a big city, but a lovely one. I’d like you to go there.” “What’s the deal?” He returned to his chair. “About six months ago,” Freddy said, “I was there on vacation. Remember Paul Obledo? Short guy with the thick glasses? Used to do a lot of driving for me? Well, he’d spent a good amount of time there, used to go there nearly every summer, gave me tips on where to go and what to do.” “You have a good time?” “It was nice, yes. Like I said, a lovely city.” He paused and contemplated his drink, then looked at Charlie, who was sitting quietly watching the ducks


outside. He looked back at Dempster and went on. “We stayed at a hotel right down in the historic area. The Eldorado, just off the Plaza. Beautiful place. Pueblo Revival architecture, which you might appreciate, and an extensive collection of New Mexican art. Great Southwestern style. But I have to say that a little pizzazz was missing. The service was professional, but lacked a certain something a top class hotel should have. We had a room right over their bandstand. One night a band played extremely loud until about two a.m. and it was impossible to sleep.” He paused again, chuckled to himself, then said, “Anyway, the Eldorado is of an incredible class. Everyone from the biggest names in business to the biggest names in Hollywood stay there. Top notch, and within its guts is, shall we say, an abundance of wealth.” “I think I know where you’re going with this,” Dempster told him. “I imagine you do. We’ve already got a guy on the inside. Man by the name of Gardner. Doug Gardner. Been there a long time and knows all the ins and outs. Knows the vault, keeps track of the safe deposit boxes. The figures fluctuate, but not as much as you might think. During the summer it’s usually higher.” Here he leveled his gaze at Dempster. “It’s summer now.” Dempster leveled his gaze right back at the man. “I know.”

3


That night Dempster slept in one of Freddy Skeele’s guestrooms. Though he was tired as could be, and the bourbon he’d had encouraged him even further down that dark tunnel of sleep, he found his eyes roaming through the darkness, observing the various shadows and shapes around him. A black square on the wall that he knew was a painting of Mosquito Creek Lake. The desk on his right, now just a dark crooked box. A tall bookshelf on his left, a series of potted plants on top of it like hair, which turned the entire form into one giant face. A lamp on a reading table, the only thing in the room directly catching moonlight. All of these things swimming around in not a large room, but considerably bigger than what he was used to. All of it circled, closed in on him, pressed against him until he shook his head and set things right. It was odd to think that for the past five years, even just yesterday—hell, earlier today—he had been locked up in a cold, dingy, claustrophobic cell, trying to pass the time by reading paperbacks and wishing on falling stars he couldn’t see. And while he was doing this, trying to keep his sanity, Charlie was getting married, Freddy was building himself a new house right here in Ohio that included Mission Revival architecture as well as a lake with ducks. The world had kept on moving, just like clockwork, and it was going to continue to do so, whether he wanted it to or not—whether he was in it or not. He closed his eyes and tried to picture Santa Fe, but all he came up with was an image of endless desert. Dirt, weeds, mud, and sun like in those old


western films, and every once in a while there was a small line of adobe huts, maybe a mule or a coyote trotting about, or someone looking weathered and wearing a pancho. Bullshit, he thought. It isn’t a hundred years ago and you’re not Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper or Gregory Peck. You’re a convicted felon in the 21st century, just released after a five-year stretch, not even out an entire day and already agreed to a job that could send you right back for God knows how long… No, strike that; God probably doesn’t even know. Based on Freddy’s description, he tried picturing the Eldorado hotel. Try as he may, he couldn’t conjure a thing. Only swirling blackness behind his eyes. Get some sleep, he told himself, and rolled over. You’ll have plenty of time to think about all this tomorrow. But do I wanna think about all this? Do I really wanna get involved? Do I even know how to do this kind of shit anymore? Am I really gonna just jump right in after all this time, like nothing ever happened? Like the last job I did was yesterday? Hell, I don’t even know any of the people I’ll be working with. Could be a bunch of psychopaths. Like what about this Gardner guy? Never pulled any kind of job before in his life. Suddenly Freddy suckers him in and he’s willing to throw away his entire career and risk facing jail time. For what? What kind of percentage is he gonna get? Probably more than he makes in a


year, sure, maybe a lot more, I dunno—but this isn’t like skimping a little off the top, clipping a buck here and there. This is a serious high-risk business. Guy must be part shit-for-brains to wanna get involved with something like this. Come off it, man. Gardner won’t be a problem, you know he won’t be a problem, not if Freddy says he’s on the level. Freddy’s a good man. You’ve never had any issues with him, he’s never done you wrong and you’ve been friends a long time, now drop it and get some sleep, turn off your mind and think about something else, because you’ll be hell tomorrow if you don’t, and you’ve got a long drive ahead of you. You’re driving all the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico. So think about something else, just like you’ve done for the past five years. Think of something that will help you get to sleep. Okay, let’s think about all the paperbacks you read while you were locked up. Let’s see. How about Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon? Brilliant, discusses the drama of bullfighting and its rigorous combination of athleticism and artistry and takes on a sort of metaphysical aspect. Okay, House Made of Dawn? N. Scott Momaday? Brilliant use of traditions from both Kiowa and Jemez cultures; the passages are written with loving care and expert style. Okay, all right, and what about Gold Coast by Elmore Leonard? Not quite sure about that one. Also not sure why Freddy is sending me in on a job like this with a bunch of guys I’ve never even heard of. Damn, he even mentioned they were young and fairly new to the game. Probably barely out of


the rookie stage, if barely out of high school, not that I’d know anything about that. But that’s why he needs me. Yes, that’s why he needs me. He needs someone in there who knows what he’s doing, right? To make sure everything goes smoothly? Oh, for fuck all’s sake, man, go to sleep.


Chapter Two

Having passed El Reno, Oklahoma, not very long ago, Dempster saw the car off on the side of the road. A Subaru wagon, faded blue, late 1980s model from the look of it, hood up, small U-Haul attached to the back, and an older gent in a plaid shirt standing beside it, waving his arms over his head for help. Dempster saw other people in the car, too, and one of the doors on the passenger side was open, most likely due to the crushing heat the day was forcing. Pulling to the side of the road just past the Subaru, Dempster killed the engine of the Honda Freddy had given him, and climbed out. Other than himself and this family of… three, it looked like, the highway was deserted. “Thanks for stopping,” the man said. “We’ve been stuck here for over an hour.”


“Apparently not a big day for travel,” Dempster said, looking once again up and down the road. “Guy came by about fifteen minutes ago,” the man said. “Slowed down, laughed in my face, and took off. Asshole. You got a cell phone on you?” “Yeah, but I already know it’s out of range. What’s the problem?” “Not sure. I don’t understand cars to save my life. I look there under the hood, and all I see is a jumble of metal and rubber. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle and I’ve never been good at those. I could stand here a whole year and not know a damn thing about what I was looking at.” The front passenger door opened. A woman, give or take around the man’s age—late fifties or early sixties—stepped out and joined them at the engine. With the years she had on her, she wore them nicely. Her warm smile, for whatever reason, made Dempster think of honey, and a certain gleam in her eye said that she’d spent a lot of time at the bottom but could still see the top. “Well, I’m no mechanic, but let’s have a look and see what we find.” “I appreciate it,” the man said. “Hillary and I here, we’re on our way to Taos. Sandra, in the car, stayed to finish school. Folks moved there about a year ago. Now we’re helping move her. Haven’t seen my brother since they left Tulsa.” Dempster looked down at the engine. “What did the car do?” “We were driving along, and all of a sudden it just cut out”—he snapped his fingers—“like that. Had the thing tuned up right before we left, too.


Wanted to take it to Jimmy Landis. Been my mechanic for years, but he couldn’t do it in time so I took it to one of those chain places. Didn’t want to but sometimes you don’t have much choice. I bet, though, had Jimmy done the tune up, we wouldn’t have been sitting here for the last hour.” “You could be right,” Dempster said. “Fortunate for you, though, it looks like it might just be…go try it.” “What, already?” “Yeah, give it a shot.” “You’ve barely touched anything.” “Hopefully I don’t have to touch any more.” The man stood there, looking at him. An unsaid message passed between them. A moment later the man removed his indignant stare, shrugged, and walked around the car. Dempster glanced at Hillary. The woman tapped her foot at nothing in particular on the ground, then smiled, and asked with a soft voice, “Where are you headed?” “Actually I’m heading to New Mexico myself,” Dempster said. “Santa Fe.” Just then the engine cranked and the car came to life. “How do you like that?” the man said climbing back out. “Man practically just looks at the thing and he gets it going. You got some sort of divine power or something?” “It’s nothing,” Dempster said. “The coil wire just came out of the


distributor. Probably didn’t put it on well enough during the tune up. Simple mistake.” “Well, all the same, I’ll be giving those goofballs a call when we get back to Tulsa, that’s for sure. And where the hell are my manners, anyway? I’m Burt Colvin.” He offered his hand. “Jack Driscoll,” Dempster said, accepting it. “Nice to meet you, Jack. Guess you already know, but this is my wife Hillary, and still tucked away in the car there like a mole in the ground is our niece Sandra.” Then to his niece, “Sandra, come out here and meet Mister Driscoll.” The door had been open since he’d first pulled up, but what emerged from it took him by surprise. First of all, she wasn’t some seventeen-year-old google-eyed little girl like he’d expected when Burt said she had just finished school. If she had just finished high school then she had to be dumb as a post because she looked to be closer to around twenty-four or –five. The innocence that stared from her eyes could have been interpreted as a sign of stupidity, but Dempster knew it wasn’t. Her delicate, almost porcelain-like face was accented lightly with freckles, while her auburn hair was cut to tickle her shoulders, and her tiny impromptu smile sent a buzz through Dempster he didn’t know he could have. Her voice embodied genuine friendliness, too, light and bouncy without seeming inane when she said, “Nice to meet you, Mister Driscoll. Thanks for


stopping and helping us out.” Reaching to shake her hand, Dempster fought an urge to pull her to him. It had been a long time since he’d felt anything like this. Fortunately he won against the temptation and simply replied with, “Nice to meet you, Sandra. Glad to be of service.” “Where you on your way to, Jack?” Dempster tore his gaze away from Sandra and brought it to the inquiring Burt. “Santa Fe,” he said. “Heading out there for a job and to see an old friend.” “Well, that’s not more than a little over an hour from Taos. We’ll practically be neighbors, at least for a couple days.” He looked at his wife and niece, then back to Dempster. “Tell you what. Next town can’t be too far by now. You wanna follow us in, make sure we get there all right, we’d love to buy you some lunch.” “That’s not necessary, Burt.” “Of course it isn’t, but we’d sure like to. Only decent man on this side of the Mississippi, I’d like to buy that man lunch. C’mon, what do you say?” Dempster looked down the lonely stretch of road. When he brought his attention back, his eyes instantly focused on Sandra, who was smiling and giving the smallest, subtlest nod of encouragement. She didn’t even seem aware that she was doing it. “Well,” Dempster said, “I guess I would be a fool to say no.”


2

The Weary Traveler was a large place, behind the times, high-ceilinged and grungy, with metal furniture appearing rustic only due to its loss of varnish. The corner booth they sat in was much too large for four people, the music being played was the undesirable and forgotten stuff from the 50s and early 60s, and the air-conditioning was too high. The walls boasted photographs of old movie stars, as well as classic film posters. On the wall, directly behind Burt, was a framed picture of James Cagney, while to the left and right were posters for the Cagney films White Heat and The Public Enemy. High above was a mock road sign that said CAGNEY CORNER. Dempster saw no connection whatsoever between the diner’s name and interior scheme. “They don’t do a bad chicken fried steak,” Burt said cutting away at it. “I sense it’s probably a triple bypass served up on a platter, but it works well enough for me.” He shoveled another bite into his mouth and looked at Dempster. “So what are you supposed to do when you get to this museum?” “On this trip I’ll mostly be studying and appraising,” Dempster said. “Some questions were raised not long ago as to whether some of the pieces were legit. You know, the real thing? If they are, then it’s up to me to see if the


value held on them is accurate, and if they’re not the real thing—forgeries—I need to find out if they’re anything worthwhile at all, or if they should just be junked.” “Don’t take this the wrong way, Jack, but from the looks of you, you don’t strike me as someone that would deal with works of art.” “You’re not the first person to ever tell me that.” “You seem more rugged and masculine than the common image of an art appraiser.” “All different kinds of people for all different kinds of jobs,” Dempster told him, and tossed a casual glance toward Sandra and found she was watching him. The buzz inside him returned, and so, for a change of pace, he diverted the conversation in her direction. “What did you just finish studying in school?” “Literature,” she said. “I wanted to be sure that I got a degree in something that would never get me a real job.” “You might have actually done just that, honey,” Burt told her with a snicker, diving once more into his chicken fried steak. “I’m not interested in any great job,” Sandra said. Her attention was on Dempster. “I don’t necessarily care what I do, so long as my soul is still intact when I die.” “Here she goes,” Burt said, almost apologetically. “ ‘The Human Race is but a monotonous affair,’ ” she quoted. “‘Most of


them labor the greater part of their time for mere substinence—’ ” “‘And the scanty portion of freedom which remains,’ ” Dempster finished for her, “ ‘so troubles them that they use every exertion to get rid of it.’ ” A look of surprise crossed Sandra’s face. It blossomed into admiration, and finally into a smile. “That’s right,” she said. “I didn’t expect—” “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” Dempster cut in. “Wolfgang Von Goethe.” “Right again.” “I know.” His sudden, curt interruptions appeared to throw not only Sandra, but Burt and Hillary as well. They appeared not so much offended, but rather surprised at his abrupt smugness. Picking up his burger, he took a large bite in order to keep his mouth occupied for a while. Then from Hillary, before he had swallowed: “Did you study literature in school?” “No,” he said, still chewing, “I just read a lot.” “You apparently know your stuff.” He shrugged, “Here and there,” and swallowed. “You’re an interesting man,” Sandra said, leaning closer. “The other option is boring,” he answered, finding himself now confused by his original conception of this girl. He wondered if the innocence in her eyes should be, for all practical purposes, exchanged for carefree. He also


understood, however, that these were often the same thing. “I make a point,” he continued, “of trying to better myself when I can.” “He knows your books,” Burt said. “He can fix cars, analyze art. From the way you’ve been sitting there, Jack, I bet you can tell me who’s on the movie poster behind you and to your left, can’t you?” “Fred Astaire.” Burt chuckled. “Anything you can’t do?” “I can’t ride a unicycle with my hands, but I’ll be starting on that when I get back to Ohio.” Burt laughed and the awe that seemed to be developing, thankfully, dissolved. Dempster didn’t like all the attention being on him. He generally preferred to blur, be non-descript, unmemorable. The more one stood out, the more one would be remembered. It heightened the level of risk, no matter how low that risk might be. Despite all of this, he couldn’t help showing off at times. Especially when it was in front of someone like Sandra. “Tell me, Jack,” Sandra said, shifting in her seat, “this might sound a bit pretentious.” “Everyone’s allowed a little of that.” “If you can, sum yourself up in just a sentence or two. What kind of a person are you?” “Is this some pseudo-intellectual exercise you learned in college?” It came off snide. He knew that. He became aware, too, that Burt and Hillary


were once again taken aback. Sandra, on the other hand, didn’t flinch. “Humor me,” she said. Dempster took another bite of his burger. He chewed meticulously, swallowed, then said, “ ‘An embittered atheist; the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike him.’ ” Sandra narrowed her eyes with an odd, confused scrutiny. “Camus?” she guessed. “Orwell,” he told her.

3

Outside the sun cascaded a thick, blinding light over everything. It dripped off the buildings and parked cars, formed large bright pools around shadows, and twinkled off windshields like glitter. The gas station two hundred yards down the road rippled through heat waves, as though drunk and about to collapse. The four of them came to a stop at the blue Subaru. “Well,” Burt said, “guess we’re gonna fill up the tank and get back on the road.” He extended his hand once more. “Nice to meet you, Jack. Thanks


again for your help.” “Not a problem. Thanks for lunch.” “My pleasure.” He watched Burt and Hillary climb into the car. Sandra, who had been sticking closer to him ever since he’d quoted Orwell, remained standing beside him. When the engine revved and she didn’t move, Burt rolled down his window. “Aren’t you coming?” he asked. “We got all your stuff. It would be strange not having you with it.” “I’ll walk over to the gas station,” she said. “I’d like to talk a bit more with Mister Driscoll. That is, if he doesn’t mind.” “Well,” Burt said, “don’t dilly-dally. Still got a lot of miles ahead of us.” “I’ll walk her over,” Dempster said, “and we can talk on the way.” “All right.” The car puttered out of the parking lot, hit the road, and before he knew it, Dempster found himself walking. “That comment you made,” Sandra said after a time, “about pseudointellectual exercises? Is that how you felt about everything in college? That everyone and everything is a fake?” “I can’t really say for sure. I never went to college. My life didn’t allow me the luxury.” “I’m sorry.”


“There’s no reason to be sorry.” After a short pause, “What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?” Dempster shrugged. “Life goes different ways for different people. Some people’s lives are formed by a cookie cutter and some are immediately tossed from the kitchen.” He laughed to himself. “That’s a lame way of putting it.” “But it’s true,” she said. “Yes, it is. My life went more the way of the latter part of the analogy. I’d like to just leave it at that.” “Is that why you said what you did? Because you never got to go?” “Partly, and partly because I’ve known a lot of people over the years, and often, those that went to college never seem to have left college. They play these tricks on themselves, attempt to relate to people they have no concept of being, disguise their ignorance and sheltered lives through fifty-cent words and regurgitated information. And they walk around sputtering it, quoting Dostoevsky or Nietzsche, nipping from Robert Sherwood or Wolfgang Von Goethe as though it was theirs. I mean no offense when I say this, but most college students don’t have an original idea in their head.” “I saw thousands of ideas bounced around. Many of them were brilliant.” “Most likely they weren’t original. A couple, maybe, but not many. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to go off on some tangent and I don’t mean to throw disrespect in your face. Maybe you’re a genius, I dunno.”


“I certainly don’t see myself as a genius.” “Thing is, you could be. I dunno. You could be the greatest genius the world has ever known.” He lightly tapped her shoulder. “Just promise me that if you’re not, or you don’t find out how to be, you won’t be too disappointed.” “Why would I be disappointed?” She laughed. It was a cute little laugh. “I’m not interested in being a genius. I’m interested in love and romance, life and death. Watching the sun rise in the morning and set at night. Making love under the stars with someone I truly love. I couldn’t care less if I ever do anything brilliant. Like I said, so long as my soul is still intact when I die, I’ll let the world take me wherever it wants to.” It was then that Dempster felt her hand slip into his. It almost made him jump, but didn’t. Rather than looking at her just then, he looked up ahead and found that they were closing in on the gas station. “You’re a remarkable woman, Sandra.” “Merci beaucoup, vous le bel homme.” “I got thank you very much,” Dempster said. “The rest just sounded foreign to me, maybe like French or something.” “I said thank you very much, you handsome man.” Her grip tightened on his. “You’re not too bad yourself.” A contemplative sigh accompanied a thoughtful pause. Then she said, “Maybe it’s abrupt. Maybe I’m insane and I’m sorry if I am, but this kind of feels like ships passing in the night.” Dempster chose not to acknowledge this last statement. A moment later


their hands parted. “So what are you going to do when you get to Taos?” “I have no idea. Spend some time with my parents, I suppose. Set up camp for a little while; see what I think of the place. I’ve never been there before. If I don’t care for it, I’ll move on and explore. All I know for sure is I was ready to get out of Tulsa. This seems like a logical step.” “Though you don’t care where the world takes you.” “Sometimes you need to have at least a bit of a plan.” “That’s true.” “What about you? What are you going to do in mystical Santa Fe?” He allowed himself to shrug again. “Guess I’ll do what I always do. My job. And if time permits it, maybe I’ll search around a bit, I dunno, look for something to believe in.” She reached out and took his hand again briefly, squeezing it hard. With a cute little laugh accompaniment she said, “May we both find what we’re looking for.” “And what are you looking for?” he asked her. “I don’t have any fucking idea,” she said.

4


As he crossed the border and entered Texas, Dempster found himself still thinking about Sandra Colvin. The look he had first seen in her eyes, and how it had evolved into something far beyond what he had imagined. A sweet woman, maybe just a kid, yet she stirred inside him something that he had forgotten existed. Something that made his chest flutter and his knees weak. Though he would have liked to blame this on the fact that he hadn’t seen the light of day in five years, somehow, somewhere embedded deep inside his heart or mind or soul or somewhere, he understood there was more to it. He had loved when she’d taken his hand. Their conversation over lunch, and while walking over to the gas station. He felt as though he’d known her for ages, though he knew nothing about her. And he wanted to know her. A burning, almost obsessive desire to know her, and to know her more still, in every way he could think of. And now she was gone. The likelihood of their paths ever crossing again was slim, almost infinitesimal. Maybe she was right, even though it still sounded insane to him now. Maybe they were ships passing in the night, each just missing out on that thing he had so flippantly mentioned. That thing to believe in, worth living for, worth dying for. “Fuck it,” he said to himself, and thought about how there was no sense in worrying about the one that got away.


Chapter Three

When he pulled into the driveway of 1045 Coyote’s End Trail around ten o’clock that night, Dempster was more than ready to be out of the car. After a while the driving had become just like being in a mobile prison cell, in which he couldn’t get out as the world passed him by, and he had no choice but to keep a sharp focus on it. The night was dark and peaceful, with a million stars sparkling through it like jewels. The air was warm and pleasant and dryer than he was used to. Even though it was dark, he could tell the house was big. Also that it was isolated. Rented through a friend of Freddy’s—he had no idea who—it had been promised to have scenic beauty, wilderness, and seclusion. Even at this time of night and after such a long drive, there was no doubt that it had these


amenities. The lights were on inside. Dempster studied the place a while, watched a quick shadow pass by a curtained window. As he made his way to the door, his ears honed away from the night song of crickets and in on rock ‘n’ roll. He didn’t like this as a welcome. It was already destroying the peace he’d finally felt when he climbed out of the car. At the front door he hesitated, debated whether he should knock or just walk in. To hell with it. He turned the knob, and stepped inside. The music became louder. The place was hot and stuffy and smelled like stale beer and cigarette smoke. There were clothes strewn about and the television was on with the volume down and no one watching it. Around the television, as well as around the stereo beside it, was a series of empty beer bottles, ranging from Heineken and New Castle to Coors and Budweiser, and from what he guessed to be the kitchen, he heard voices and laughter. Goddammit all to hell. Just then someone entered the room, beer to his lips and head tilted back. As he walked over to the stereo and pressed a button on it, he didn’t even notice Dempster. The song playing came to an abrupt end, and a second later another song began. The guy cranked the volume up even more, then turned around and caught sight of Dempster standing in the room. Startled, he dropped his beer, which shattered on the tile floor.


“Turn it off,” Dempster told him. The drunken idiot just stood there, dumbfounded. He almost seemed to be shrinking. Dempster crossed the room and switched off the stereo. While he was at it he shut off the TV too. “Hey,” came a voice from the kitchen. “What are you doing to our tunes?” “Answer him,” Dempster said. “Um…” The kid’s eyes flickered nervously from Dempster to the kitchen and back again. He stood like an uprooted dead tree. Skinny as a nail but not nearly as mean looking, more like someone that would fall over if you blinked too hard in his direction. Dempster didn’t like him. “I think you guys better come in here.” He looked at Dempster for approval. Dempster didn’t give him any. Two men entered the room. Each had a beer in his hand. A cigarette dangled from the mouth of the one on the left. The one on the right, given the presence he embodied, appeared to be the one in charge. He was stocky and standing strong, but weakness and surprise showed clearly through his feigned cool. Dempster didn’t like these guys either. “Something we can help you with, sir?” This from the stocky one. His tone was also feigned self-confidence.


“Which one of you is Wolfe?” “That would be me,” the stocky one said. “You the guy?” Dempster looked around the disaster of the room again, then took in the sight of the three idiots, the first standing above his shattered beer with his tail between his legs, the second merely confused and smoking, the third trying to keep charge. “I should have expected something like this.” “Something like what?” Wolfe asked. Dempster threw him a look. “This the way your parents raised you?” “What’d you mean?” “What is this?” the guy with the cigarette asked. “This some kind of chaperone party?” “Look, pal,” Wolfe said, “we don’t take kindly to people barging in unannounced and acting like an asshole and making trouble.” Dempster spun on the man and slapped him so hard it echoed. The other two guys, rather than advancing on Dempster, each took a step back. Dempster narrowed his eyes at them. “That’s nice, real nice,” he said. “Glad to know what kind of backup I got. First sign of trouble and you retreat. I feel really confident about this whole thing now.” A frustrated sigh escaped him as he looked at each of them in turn. Then, “Yeah, I’m the guy. I’m the guy that just pulled in all the way from


fucking Ohio. The one you were all told about, I’m sure. Now, I’m gonna ask you three mooks just one thing, and I want you to be real damn honest with me. Do you behave like this all the time, or is this just a one night stand?” The three of them exchanged glances. Dempster waited, feigning patience. Wolfe, with his hand on his cheek and a different, weaker tone of voice, asked, “What business is it of yours? What do you care?” Dempster raised his hand again and the boy cowered. After a second, realizing he wasn’t going to be struck, the kid resumed his original stance, holding it with less confidence than before. His cheek had gone red. “I ask because you idiots are clearly irresponsible,” Dempster told them. “You’re messy. You’re unaware, and you obviously don’t give a shit. Now, if this is the way you are every day of your life, then to hell with you all. You can just get the hell out. I’m not wasting my time and I’m certainly not going to waste Mister Skeele’s time on a bunch of loser fuck-ups. If this is your constant behavior, then there are about fifty million ways you can fuck up what we are all here to do, and I have no tolerance for that—none whatsoever. I don’t want your blood on my hands and I definitely don’t want mine on yours.” He walked to the man with the cigarette, plucked the cigarette from the man’s hand, and dropped it to the floor. “However,” he said, “if this is not every night behavior, and you fellows are just having a good time, blowing off some steam, maybe getting psyched up or something, and you’ll be cleaning


this all up and getting ready to get to work tomorrow, then let’s do just that.” He stepped away. “It’s up to you.” A long silence played out. A deaf silence, like right after an explosion. Dempster stood, waiting. “Of course,” the one that’d had the cigarette said. His voice quavered and sounded like sand. “Course it’s just a one night thing, ain’t it, guys?” “Yeah,” the first guy said, still seeming to shrink. “We were just blowing off steam, like—like you said. We always do this. I mean, we always do this right before a job. Right before we get serious and down to business.” Dempster shifted his focus from one to the other, not in the least bit convinced. Then he brought it to Wolfe, who now stood with his shoulders slumped and his head down, as though he were trying to admire his own shoes. “What about you, tough guy?” Slowly, Wolfe shook his head. “No.” He lifted his head and looked Dempster right in the eye. “We don’t do this every night.” Once again Dempster looked at each in turn. A weight of despair tugged at him and he couldn’t help questioning the whole deal. He had been worried from the start, and now he knew that it had been with good cause. These guys were in fact, for all practical purposes, a bunch of mooks. Dammit all to hell again. “Okay,” Dempster said. “I just want things clear from the get-go.” He


patted the kid’s shoulder. “I’m Dempster. You’re Wolfe.” “Evan Wolfe.” “Who are these two?” “This here’s Clark”—he indicated the one who’d been smoking—“and that’s Jimmy.” Dempster nodded to each of them. They both responded the same way. Back to Evan Wolfe. “So what’s the score so far?” “We just got here a couple days ago,” Evan said, his tone lightening, becoming more conversational. “The tourism is just starting to pick up and really get going. Gardner—our guy on the inside—he says that the place should be busting at the seams in about another week or two. He’s taking all kinds of hotshot reservations.” “I wanna meet this Gardner guy.” “You will. He’ll be stopping by in another day or two.” “Is he in touch with Mister Skeele?” “Sure. Everybody needs to be in touch with everybody, right?” “Okay, then I’m gonna go get my things. Where’s the master bedroom?” “What’s that?” “I’ll take the master bedroom, if you don’t mind.” Evan, with anger flaring in his eyes, clenched one hand into a fist, then simply nodded. “Yeah, all right,” he said. “I’ll move my things out of it.” “Good.”


Dempster turned and went out to the car. When he got there, he climbed in and shut the door, then took out his cell phone and dialed Freddy Skeele back in Ohio. “Hey, Freddy, it’s Dempster.” “Hiya, Demp. You in Santa Fe?” “Yeah, I just got in. Listen, I’m sorry to call you so late, but I need to ask you about these imbeciles you’re sticking me with. What’s their story?” “Oh, they’re all right. They’re good men.” “I’m not sure I trust them, if you want my honest opinion. They seem like completely unreliable assholes.” “You can trust them. Don’t worry about it. I’ll admit, they’re young and maybe even a bit wild at times. They certainly aren’t in your league. Of course very few are these days. Times change, Dempster. Sadly, most of the really good ones are gone. But trust me, when it comes down to doing their job, they’re professional as can be.” “All right,” Dempster said. “If you say they’re okay, then they’re okay. When are you gonna be in Albuquerque?” “I’ll be there the day after tomorrow. You’ll get the number and address immediately.” “All right.”


2

“I don’t like him,” Evan said to Clark and Jimmy, staring at the front door. “Smug son of a bitch, comes in and starts pushing us around. Slaps me in the face.” “I wouldn’t try crossing any lines with him,” Jimmy said, cleaning his shattered beer up from the floor. “He’s kind of a legend in this world, you know, not someone you want on your bad side, I don’t think.” “To hell with that,” Evan said. “He’s not in charge. He’s no more in charge than any of the rest of us.” “Don’t be stupid,” Clark said, lighting a fresh cigarette. “Who are you calling stupid? He’s not so tough. We could take him if we had to.” “Maybe,” Clark said, “but we’re not gonna. You start anything with that guy, Evan, you’re gonna find yourself doing it alone. You won’t be getting any help from me, anyway. We need that man. Need him a lot more than he needs us.” Evan looked at the door again and clenched his fists, then drew a breath and resigned. “Okay, maybe you’re right. But I still say he’s a smug son of a bitch.”


“No one disagreed with that,” Clark said.

3

Dempster unpacked the things Freddy Skeele had supplied him with. There was an uneasy feeling in his gut as he removed the clothing and toiletries, the extra pair of shoes, the wad of cash, the false identification naming him Jack Driscoll, and the Colt Series 70 Government .45 and its rounds. None of these things were the cause of his apprehension, however. Rather it was where he found himself now, as opposed to earlier this afternoon, or yesterday, or the day before or the one before that. Time moves quickly, he said to himself as he placed a couple of shirts into the drawer second from the top of his dresser. Changes are erratic. He looked about the large room with its king-sized bed and expensive furniture, its southwestern paintings hanging on the walls. Probably one of the nicest rooms he’d ever stayed in. Even had a private bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub. Yet despite the luxury he found himself in, through the door and just down the hall were three individuals he still considered, at this time, to be risks. They had to know he was showing up today. Hell, Evan said it himself:


Everybody needs to be in touch with everybody, right? Right, so why was the place such a dump? A beautiful home and the first thing they do is trash it. Can’t be sure of anything when the others involved leave so much crap behind, make such huge messes and have clearly been drinking since the moment they arrived. That’s not professional. It’s not even irresponsible—it’s just downright dumb, which makes all of this downright dangerous. He would have preferred to be back in Oklahoma, walking along with Sandra Colvin, talking with her in stimulating ways, having her hand slip into his and squeeze tight. He knew he could have kissed her. That would have been very nice. He had wanted to do that; but he hadn’t, and was glad. He couldn’t allow it to be more than ships passing in the night. He’d gone his way and she’d gone hers, and now all that remained was the sweet memory of a brief encounter, and that’s all there was to it. That’s all there was ever going to be. A knock came at the door. “Come in.” It was Clark. He stood in the doorway, shuffling his feet and clearing his throat for longer than he should have had to. Then, “I just wanna apologize,” he said, “for all three of us but mostly for my friend. Evan likes to think of himself as the boss and, well, having a real professional brought in sort of threatened him, I think.”


“That’s his problem,” Dempster said. “True,” Clark said, looking down at the floor. “But look, the different levels of experience aside, okay? Given that we’re all in this together, and we’re going to be spending a lot of time together, whether we like it or not, at least for a little while…if we can’t be friends, can we at least not want to kill each other?” “How does your friend feel about that?” “Oh, he agrees, we all agree. Evan just sometimes gets overly confident, that’s all. Me and Jimmy, we try harder to keep a grasp on the situation.” “That why you both backed away when I bitch-slapped him?” “Thing is,” Clark said, “we all know who you are. You’re not some two-bit crook like the three of us. You’re the big time, man. Honestly, we’re sort of honored to be working with you, especially on your first job since—” “Can I get back to what I’m doing, or is there something else you need, Clark?” Clark stuttered and removed a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Just spoke with Gardner,” he said. “He’s coming by tomorrow.” “Good.” “He’ll have a layout of the hotel with him too.” “Fine.” “I’ll let you get back to whatever you’re doing now.” “Make sure you close the door.”


Clark lipped a cigarette and left. Dempster loaded his gun.


Chapter Four

At ten the next morning, Dempster came out of his room to find the place in immaculate condition. It hadn’t been long after Clark had left last night that Dempster had collapsed onto his bed and succumbed to a deep sleep. He was pleased to find that, as the hours had winked by, the words he had spoken to his three new roommates had taken hold, and they’d done something about it. The beer bottles were all gone from around the television and stereo. There were no clothes strewn about, no garbage, and it appeared that someone had even gone over the floors with a broom. When he entered the kitchen it smelled faintly of disinfectant, the countertops shined like new, and he saw Evan, Clark and Jimmy, all sitting around the table reading different sections of the newspaper, with bowls of cereal and cups of coffee in front of them.


Clark looked up and said, “Good morning,” and when he did the other two did the same. “There are bowls and spoons and stuff over there,” Jimmy said, “and there’s a mug next to the coffee maker for you.” Dempster fought an urge to smile. Instead he crossed the room to pour himself some coffee and said, “The place looks great.” “We started on it last night after you sacked out,” Clark said. “The hardest part was respecting your sleep as we cleared out all the bottles.” Dempster took a seat at the table and sipped his coffee. “Aren’t you gonna eat anything?” Jimmy asked. “This will be fine for now. My stomach isn’t awake yet.” Evan brought down his paper and looked at him. His face was darkened and there was fire in his eyes, but his voice came off chipper enough when he asked Dempster if he had slept well. “I slept fine,” Dempster told him. “Thank you.” “Good,” Evan said. “Everyone needs their rest. Can’t be walking around half dead, not in the line of work we’re in.” Dempster took a slow deep breath, then said quietly, “That’s right,” and had another sip of coffee. If there’s one to worry about, Dempster said to himself, it’s that one right there. There’s something about him that’s just not sitting right. You can’t let him get to you, though. If you let him get to you, he’s gonna figure it out, and


he might try to play upon that, might even try to pull something, and that’s the last thing anyone needs. You’ve dealt with many people tougher than him— much tougher. So don’t let him get to you. He looked across the table and saw that Jimmy’s lips moved as he read. For a while there was no sound in the room. Dempster found his eyes ceaselessly patrolling the kitchen for no good reason. A natural instinct, perhaps, one as natural as blinking, only it had been lying dormant for several years and was just kicking back into gear since his release. Since he’d come back to real life. He watched Clark set down his paper, ease back and light up a cigarette. Breakfast time seemed to be coming to an end. Dempster said to him, “You told me last night that Gardner is coming by today.” Clark sucked on his cigarette. “That’s right,” he said. Two trails of uprising smoke eased from his nose. “Should be bringing by a layout of the hotel.” “What time is he showing up?” “Probably somewhere between five and six.” “All right. I have to run into town. Have some other business to attend to. I’ll be back by then.” He got up and carried his coffee over to the kitchen telephone, where beside it sat a phonebook. He flipped through the yellow pages until he found the hotel section, located the Eldorado, saw it was on


West San Francisco Street, and committed the address to memory. As he did this, he heard Clark get up and take his bowl and mug over to the sink, and as he rinsed them Jimmy began talking. “I told you about that Crazy College Girl video I bought? The one with that gorgeous babe on the cover?” “What about it?” Clark said. “She’s really hot and there’s a nice scene with her in her dorm room,” Jimmy said. “There are some other okay looking girls, I guess, but it’s the babe on the cover that makes it. Otherwise it wasn’t worth buying.” “And how much did you spend on that?” Evan asked. “More than I should have,” Jimmy admitted. By this time Dempster had flipped into the residential listings and located the phone number he was looking for. He scribbled it on the edge of the phonebook page, then tore the edge out and closed the book. He stuffed the piece of paper into his pocket and turned back to find Clark and Jimmy both at the sink, Clark doing the dishes, Jimmy talking useless garbage at him. Evan was still at the table, currently folding up the newspaper. He made a subtle head motion for Dempster to join him. His voice was very soft when he said, “I just wanna say I’m sorry about last night. You had every right to be pissed and we were less than accommodating.” It was difficult to gauge the man’s sincerity, probably because there was little there.


“Forget it,” Dempster said. “Let’s just keep on track.” “Oh yeah, everything will be on track,” Evan said. “Nothing will stray, don’t worry.” He shuffled in his seat and moved an inch closer. “If I can get serious for just a second, the fact is we need this job. We need it like you wouldn’t believe, and we’re willing to do anything we can to make sure it all goes right.” “I need this job, too,” Dempster said. “I guess that’s why we’re all here.” He tapped his knuckles twice on the table then walked out of the kitchen, trusting Evan Wolfe like he trusted a jar of sulfuric acid saying “Drink me.”

2

He parked the Honda on Lincoln Avenue, directly off the plaza and roughly a block and a half away from the Eldorado Hotel. Finding a parking space was much more difficult than he expected. With the tourist season picking up, the downtown area was packed and swarming with oblivious outof-towners who didn’t seem to know of they were coming or going. Taking a slow lap around the Plaza, he took things in. On the west side: Dressman’s Gifts, the Plaza Diner, and at the south end a classy-looking


restaurant called the Ore House, which was right across San Francisco Street from the Plaza Bakery and the Five and Dime. A series of galleries, clothing and jewelry shops lined the south side. The eastern side was not much different with the exception of a shop selling large oriental rugs and the sight of the Saint Francis Cathedral. The north side was unique in that, rather than shops, it was dozens of Native American Indians, sitting on blankets under a long portal, peddling homemade jewelry to what must have been at least a hundred starry-eyed vacationers. The building these people sat in front of was the Palace of the Governors, now converted into the state’s history museum. Directly across from this, on the Plaza itself, was a stage, and right in the center of the square was an obelisk, surrounded by an iron fence. A monument commemorating Santa Fe’s history and culture. Dempster strolled back to where he’d started, walked along the west side again, then made a right on San Francisco Street. The shops on either side of the narrow one-way were much the same as they’d been on the plaza, only with a little more corporate flare—a Banana Republic on the right, a Starbucks on the left. At the next corner was Evangelo’s Cocktail Lounge, followed by Collected Works Bookstore. Across from this was the Lensic Performing Arts Theater announced the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performing “Ode to Joy” later that night and for the next three nights following. At the next intersection the cross street was Sandoval. Across it, on the left, was a Hilton. On the right was the largest building he’d seen so far.


Five stories high, contemporary southwestern in style with exposed black rafters, blue-trimmed windows, and potted trees strategically positioned here and there, a couple flanking the stairway like royal guards. In front was a small series of steps. At the top, above an exquisitely wood-carved four-door entryway, the single word ELDORADO was displayed in gold. The whole place sort of had a feeling like that. A feeling of gold, as though the entire hotel could be made from it. Freddy was right, he thought, this place is high class. Dempster stood at the bottom of the steps and admired the sign for only a brief moment. Then he continued on, and slowly walked around the hotel’s entire perimeter. No serious concentration right now, just enough of a look-see to get a light sense of the place. He made a right and then another. Across the street was the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, as well as something called the Crompton Gallery. He made a note to check out the museum at some point, if time permitted. He came full circle, passing the hotel’s pavilion, and arrived back at the corner where he’d started. He pressed the WALK button then crossed Sandoval and made his way back up San Francisco Street. Halfway to the plaza he stopped at a payphone. He removed the torn piece of phonebook from his pocket, pumped a couple of coins into the phone, and dialed the number he’d scribbled down. The cell phone Freddy had given him was a business phone, and Dempster felt it shouldn’t be used for personal


calls, so it remained in his pocket. After two rings someone picked up. “Hello?” A woman’s voice. “Hello. Is this Angela?” “Yes.” “This is Jack Dempster.” “Jack?” A tense pause. “Well hello.” Another tense pause, then, “How are you doing?” “Can’t complain so far. Just got out a couple days ago and decided to see the country, make the rounds. How are you doing?” “I’m fine, Jack. We’re fine.” “You still sculpting?” “Yes. I—I have a show coming up in a couple of months.” “That’s great. Where?” “At a gallery. The Crompton Gallery.” “That’s right next to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, isn’t it?” “That’s right,” she said. “Very good.” He smiled at the phone. “Congratulations. Maybe I’ll be able to come back for it.” “Back?” “Yeah, I’m in Santa Fe. Got in last night. Figured since I was here I should look you guys up. Wouldn’t be fair of me to come all this way and not


even bother to say hello, right?” “Well”—she cleared her throat—“that’s very nice of you.” “Is Mike around?” “No, he’s not. He’s—he’s at work.” “Oh yeah? What’s he doing?” “He’s…well, he’s working at Essentials.” Dempster scoffed then immediately felt bad for it. “What’s that?” “It’s a book, music, and video store.” “Oh yeah? Independent?” “No, it’s a corporation. A chain, mostly in the southwest.” Another pause, this one filled with debate. Then her voice was hesitant when she said, “He’s there until six o’clock, if you’d like to drop in and see him.” “Let’s see, it’s about eleven-thirty now. Yeah, maybe I’ll stop by in a little while, see if he wants to grab some lunch or something.” “I’m sure he’d be thrilled to see you.” “I’d love to see him. Been a long time.” “It has, hasn’t it?” She gave him directions to a shopping center called De Vargas Mall. She was exceptionally good at giving directions. Most of the people Dempster associated with in his personal life had never known north from south or east from west or any variation thereof. “You going to be here for a while?” she asked.


“At least a week, I think. Maybe a couple.” “What brings you out here?” “Just vacationing. Never been this far west before, figured I’d check it out.” “Maybe the three of us could have dinner at some point.” “That would be great, I’d love that.” He knew she was humoring him. It was clear from every word that came out. “Oh,” he added, “Angela?” “Yes?” “Don’t worry, I’m not going to get Mike in any trouble or anything like that.” Something caught in her throat when she said, “I know that, Jack.” They said goodbye. She’s nervous, he thought. She was freaked out by the sound of your voice and knowing you’re in town. She doesn’t want Mike getting involved with you. She never minded before but that’s because she didn’t know what kind of person you really are. She didn’t know what you did, she never knew, and so you were just Mike’s old friend from high school who dropped out and got into a little trouble. You were straight in her eyes, though. All of your trouble, to her it was in the past. She had no idea but now she does, she knows, so she’s afraid of you and she’s afraid of Mike associating with you. He continued up the street, back towards the Plaza. A series of pictures


played behind his eyes, moving quickly, like camera flashes. Seemingly random snippets of memory, as though someone had stolen a tape of his mind, cut it up into little sections, tossed it all into the air, and then joined the pieces back together again and jammed it back into his head. However, as erratic as each flash appeared, they all had a common connection. Each tidbit involved the same two people: himself and Mike. Time shifted back and forth, back and forth and forth and back, and did it all again. Then the gears shifted and stopped, and he and Mike were standing outside a beat up old Mazda pick-up parked off Lake Avenue at the Sam Wharram Natural Reserve. They smoked cigarettes, and stared into the truck’s open back with a heavy mixture of anticipation and apprehension that blended strangely with the thick humidity in the air. It was about ten at night, and the sounds of Lake Erie swam about their young heads like ambition with a frown. They looked at the girl. Her subtle yet provocative position made it difficult for them to believe that she was in the same class with them at school. The same quiet girl who kept to herself, but chucked smiles at them any time either looked her way. Her name was Shelley, and her pale, petite body reflected the moonlight almost theatrically, as though she was something out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—too fantastical to be real. Jack and Mike smoked their cigarettes and contemplated time and again where they were, what they were doing and what was happening, or supposed to be happening.


After more endless time passed, Shelley asked, “So what do we do now? Is this all you wanted?” Jack looked at her lying there in the back of the pick-up, like a movie screen that had raised its curtain but no film has begun. Flames had already risen inside him; now they swept through his body in wide arcs and his heart pounded, while at the same time a part of him tried to violently shove it all away. He drew in on his cigarette and looked over at Mike, whose mouth was agape, and whose eyes sparkled. Worry lines, however, surrounded his eyes, and he smoked his cigarette mechanically, as though it was either there or it wasn’t and it didn’t matter any which way. Then the eyes shifted and looked at Jack, and under the glow of the moon Jack saw the eyes glaze over. They filled with neither love nor fear, but with uneasiness and distance, as though he was checking out, getting ready to walk away and call it a night. Without words they seemed to say, “I’m not sure I can do this.” Then time shifted again. Gradually the fog cleared away and Dempster found himself sitting on a bench on the Plaza. Hordes of people wandered here and there like frantic bees unable to escape an observation frame. He shook his head to clear it, then got up and went back to his car.


Chapter Five

A heavy-set Hispanic lad, early twenties, hair in a buzz-cut and a green apron with the Essentials logo on it, asked him if he was finding everything all right. “I’m looking for Mike Goodman,” Dempster told him. “Mike is the book manager.” He pointed vaguely in the general direction. “He should be over there somewhere.” The fluorescent lighting did nothing for the store’s atmosphere, nor did the gray and brown carpet, or the contemporary dance music that was definitely too loud. The entire place, everything around him, oozed with a dirty corporate slime. Dempster made his way around the awkwardly placed display tables and


over to the book department. A series of short shelves filled with bargain books shot all the way across the store. This was also a hallway to get from one end of the store to the other, dividing the book section from the music section. To the right were greeting cards, to the left the cavernous worlds of literature, selfhelp, science, biography, and so on and so forth. In between the art books and the Science-Fiction/Mystery section was an information desk, with two computers and what looked like complimentary coffee. At one of these computers, wearing a green vest with the Essentials logo, eyes transfixed on the screen and fingers tapping away at the keyboard, was his old friend. “Excuse me?” “Right with you,” Mike told him, not bothering to look up. “I’m looking for a book,” Dempster said, disregarding the right-with-you remark. “It’s about two partners in crime that split several years ago when one moved to Santa Fe and the other got picked up for armed robbery in Ohio.” Mike drew his attention away from the computer screen. When he saw Dempster a bright smile stretched across his face and he stepped away from whatever had been so important just a second ago. “My God,” he said. Dempster put his hand out. “Hey there, Perky.” “Hey there, Jerky,” Mike said with a laugh, taking the offered hand and then pulling Dempster to him in a tight bear hug. “How the hell have you been?” “Not too bad,” Dempster said. “Not bad. Life could be better but I’ll take


what I can get, I suppose. What about you?” “I’m fine, just slaving away, bending over backwards for people that don’t appreciate it.” “You look good.” “Likewise. How did you know where to find me?” “I called your house and spoke with Angela. She told me.” “Cool. What are you doing here? I mean, in Santa Fe?” “Well, I got out just a few days ago and decided I should see some more of the world. Figured a good place to start was to come out here and visit an old friend.” “That’s great, I’m glad you did.” “Have you had your lunch break yet?” “No. It’s coming up here pretty soon.” “You got any plans?” “I do now,” Mike said. “You like pizza? The pizza place here in the mall is really good.” “Who doesn’t like pizza?”

2


The table was uneven and wobbled a bit as Mike attacked his slice of pizza with a plastic knife and fork. Dempster preferred the traditional way of using his hands. “I remember,” Mike said, “when we were kids and we used to make our own little pizzas. Remember that?” “Cheese, pepperoni, and tomato sauce on an English muffin,” Dempster said. “Bite-sized pizzas before there were bite-sized pizzas.” “I think it was some Betty Crocker recipe.” “Probably. It sounds like a 1950s after-school snack.” Mike wiped his mouth and stared across the table at him. His eyes narrowed, then widened, and the sides of his mouth curved upward like a lazy crescent moon. “Seven years,” he said. “Doesn’t seem possible. Feels like I just saw you maybe a few weeks ago.” “Funny how time can do that, huh?” “Has it really been that long?” “You would know better than me. I was locked away for most of it, and avoiding getting locked away the rest of the time.” “I’m sorry,” Mike said, then cut away at his pizza. “How was it in there, if you don’t mind my asking?” “Dull,” Dempster said. “But I don’t wanna talk about that. Let’s just say that I made my bed and I slept in it, and now the alarm’s gone off and I can get back to my life. Tell me about you.”


“Not much to tell.” “Come on. Seven years living out here and you don’t have a thing to tell me?” “Honestly, no, not a whole lot. Angela and I moved out here in hopes of pursuing the arts—to see if we could make a go at it—and for the most part we’ve gotten to watch those hopes fall apart and crumble to dust.” “Angela told me she’s got a show coming up in a couple months.” “Yeah, and it’s practically the only thing to happen to either of us since we got here.” He forked pizza into his mouth. “You’re lucky you’re not an artist, Demp. And if over the years, since I’ve last seen you, you’ve decided to become one, the only advice I could offer would be don’t stick around Santa Fe—not if you want to have a chance of being even moderately successful.” “It’s really like that here, huh?” “Everyone in this town has their head so thoroughly shoved up their ass,” Mike said. “Despite the reputation of this town, there’s no market for the arts. I don’t think anybody here even cares about art. It’s just a bunch of trust-funders running around trying to act intellectual. The place pitches art and culture and turns its head away from just about all of it. ‘Celebrate diversity’ is one of the unwritten slogans here, but no one ever adds the reality that should be tagged onto that, which is ‘as long as it’s within these strict perimeters’. The diversity is very limited here. Alas, for such an open-minded place, it’s totally narrow-minded.”


“What about Angela’s show?” “Angela got into this show because of some friend of a friend of a friend, who slept with some guy or girl or whatever, who had a friend involved with the gallery.” He shook his head. “I don’t really know how it worked but it had nothing to do with anyone liking her work. It was a favor for a friend of a friend of a friend, and that friend didn’t mind so long as they got laid, or something close to that.” “You’ve taken on a bitter side,” Dempster said. “I’m not sure it suits you.” “I take what I can get. The bad as well as the good.” “What about your own work?” “I’ve just about given up.” “Come on, you’re one of the best painters I’ve ever met.” “And how many painters do you know?” “Enough to know that you’re a fool if you give it up. It’s inside you and it’s never gonna leave you alone, so why bother being anything else? You’ll drive yourself mad if you quit.” “I still do it. I’ll always do it, whether I want to or not. I’ve just lost interest in trying to get it out there, that’s all—at least for now.” “Well, you certainly make a good-looking book manager.” Mike laughed. “It’s sure good to see you, Demp.” “Yeah, you too.”


“How long are you planning on being around?” “A week, maybe a little longer. It all depends on how I feel, I guess.” “It wouldn’t depend on anything else, would it?” Dempster leaned back. “What’d you mean?” The first awkward silence of their reunion played out. It felt like an oldtime record had just finished and the needle wasn’t picking up. Mike shook his head and went at his pizza. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m sorry. Guess I’m just wondering what you’re gonna do.” “You mean am I still gonna be a hoodlum?” “I didn’t say that.” “That’s what you meant, though.” “Jack.” “Forget it, Mike. Don’t worry about it. Right now I’m just vacationing. I’m here, and I don’t know where I’ll be next. Who knows what the future holds?” More silence. This time it engulfed not only their table, but also the restaurant around them, and the mall around the restaurant, maybe even the city beyond. Then Mike said, “We’ve been friends a long time, haven’t we?” “Just about our whole lives.” “Met in the first grade, is that right?” “Yeah, that sounds right. First day of school you brought a garden


spider in a small plastic cage. A few hours later it got out and climbed on you and you freaked out. Even when the teacher took the spider outside you still wouldn’t go anywhere near that empty cage.” “I’m scared of spiders to this day,” Mike said, and slid his plate away. “Can I ask you to be straight with me on something?” “With you, I’m always straight.” Mike nodded, drew the plate back in front of him then slid it away again. “Are you really just in Santa Fe for a vacation?” Dempster leveled his gaze at him. “What do you think?” “I dunno, that’s why I asked.” Popping the last bite of pizza into his mouth, Dempster chewed methodically, taking his time. When he swallowed he made a show of it, and when he spoke his tone was matter-of-fact. “Mike,” he said, “I wanted to see the sights and see an old friend.” He paused here and waited for Mike to believe him. Eventually, he did. “Now,” Dempster said, “let’s get the hell out of here.” “Yeah, all right. I need to get back to work.” They left the table and made their way back toward Essentials. The entire mall consisted of earthy tones. The floors were dark brown, the walls were tan, the ceiling was beige, and within the gigantic crystalline skylights hung what looked like enormous dream catchers. Everywhere were wooden


benches, some of them occupied. There was no official food court, only a couple of restaurants here and there. De Vargas Mall wasn’t so much a mall as it was a large building with some shops in it, most of them locally owned but selling stuff Dempster couldn’t care less about. “How long have you been working in this place?” “About two years,” Mike told him. “Before this I was doing graphic design work for this woman who turned out to be a psychopath. Was having some sort of mid-life crisis or something, and decided to take it all out on me. So I said sayonara and came here, partially because I wanted a change but also because the job market isn’t very good. The few jobs that are available are run by people like the woman I worked for. Trust-funders who have nothing else to do, start some half-assed business, watch it flop, and don’t really care. If they feel like it, they start another one.” “Sounds like you’ve got something against trust-funders.” “I do, and they’re everywhere.” When they entered Essentials, Dempster wasn’t sure, but it sounded like the same dance song he’d heard when he’d been in here over an hour ago. He followed Mike over to his little workstation, where he watched him clock in on the computer, then go into a cabinet beneath, from which he removed his green Essentials vest. “Hey, how come you wear a vest and the kid I spoke to earlier had an apron on?”


“Managers wear vests,” Mike told him. “Classy.” Dempster couldn’t help snickering. “Well,” Mike said, slipping into his work attire, “back to work. What are you doing tonight?” “I’m actually pretty tired,” Dempster told him. “Probably just gonna get in bed and watch a movie.” “Oh yeah, I meant to ask, where are you staying?” “Some hotel out that way.” He gestured vaguely in some random direction. “Do you have a phone number, or is there any way to contact you?” “I’ll call you,” Dempster said. “Maybe tomorrow.” “Okay, sounds good.” Mike extended his arms and when they embraced Dempster felt a genuine closeness that rated right up there with his first bourbon at Freddy Skeele’s. “Good to see you, Jerky.” “Good to see you, Perky. I’ll call you tomorrow.” “All right.” Dempster turned away. “Oh, Demp?” Turning back he saw Mike looking him over. “Welcome back…to the world, that is.” “Yeah, thanks.” He turned away again, walked passed the magazine


racks until he found himself on the outskirts of the video section. There was a part of him that wanted to wander through the isles, see all of the movies he’d missed over the past five years. No, he decided, not right now. Get out of the store, leave Mike to his work. You can look around some other time. For now you should probably get back to the house and see what the guys are up to. He looked toward the front entryway, and from the corner of his left eye he saw her, holding a small stack of movies and wearing a red, tight-fitted sweater that emphasized her curves, even under the green Essentials apron. As she walked, the sweep of her mid-cut skirt drew attention to her full calves, which tapered smoothly down to her ankles and clog-encased feet, while her red hair bounced upon her back like roses swaying in a breeze. When a customer stopped her for help, she had a warm, bright smile, and a friendly, enthusiastic disposition. “Absolutely,” she told the customer. “I’d be happy to, just follow me.” Dempster told himself to stop looking at her. Yet something about the sight of her brought about an impure feeling that excited him. He told himself again to stop looking, but his eyes kept focused on her as she glanced casually at him, then turned and disappeared down one of the aisles.


Chapter Six

He didn’t much like Doug Gardner. Right from the get-go the guy came off as an arrogant twit. He wore a tan Brooks Brothers suit with a dark blue tie that had been loosened around the neck, and he sat at the kitchen table with near perfect posture. Not more than twenty-eight or –nine, his hair had thinned out considerably, and what was left on top was shaggy, making his otherwise presentable appearance seem disheveled. Flat on the table was an 11x17 layout of the Eldorado’s ground floor. Evan and Clark sat on either side of Gardner, while Dempster and Jimmy stood across from them. They all peered down at Gardner’s finger as it gave them an overhead tour. “Directly on the right here,” Gardner said, “just when you enter the lobby, is the front desk.” His voice bordered on flamboyant. “To the desk’s left here, these three little boxes are elevators.” The rooms on the layout were labeled—“Lobby,” “Lounge,” “Eldorado


Court,” “Sunset Room,” a seemingly endless “Concourse” which led passed the “Pavilion” and “Kitchen” to the “Zia Room” and “Anasazi Ballroom”. “What’s this room behind the front desk?” Dempster asked. It was the only room not labeled. “That’s where you’ll want to go,” Gardner told him. “You walk around behind the front desk here on the left. It’s a two-way door, between the desk and the elevators. Cross it and you’ll find a stock area with a copy machine and office supplies and forms and such. There will be a locked door. In that room you’ll hit the jackpot.” “That where the safe is?” Clark asked. “Yes, the safe, as well as the safe deposit boxes.” “How many of those are there?” “Two hundred.” “Two hundred?” Jimmy’s tone was shocked and indignant. “We’ll be there all night.” “No we won’t,” Evan said. “They’re not all gonna be full, and Doug will know which ones we want, right?” “That’s right,” Gardner said. “It won’t be a hundred percent accurate of course, because of a few comings and goings, but earlier in the day or the day before I’ll get you a numbered list of which boxes are occupied. Whoever’s going into that room will have to memorize it to the best of their abilities.” “What kind of safe deposit boxes are they?” Dempster asked.


“Standard steel bond boxes. Double nose locks.” “Double nose locks are gonna take a couple seconds longer apiece,” Clark said. “That’ll really add up.” “Nothing to worry about,” Evan told him. “If all is cool and things are smooth, we can take as much time as we need.” “Where do you keep the keys for those boxes?” Dempster asked. “There is a set kept in the same room,” Gardner told him. “That won’t be a problem.” “Okay, and what about the safe?” “It’s in the right corner at the back, along side the boxes. Forty-nine inches high and twenty-four inches wide. It has two safe locks that require double-bit keys, and also a combination lock.” “You know the combination?” “It changes weekly, but yeah, I can get it.” “And there’s a set of keys for the safe in there, too?” “Yes.” “All right, and what’s security like in that room?” “Two guards in that room at all times, each armed with a pistol. Monitors for the hotel cameras are in there too.” Here he withdrew a pen and made little Xs everywhere a camera was positioned throughout the entire bottom floor. Just the lobby alone had four cameras. There was also one behind the front desk and one in the safe room.


“One concern, which is out of my hands,” Gardner said. “There is a silent alarm trigger beneath the monitor table in the safe room.” “That’s pretty risky,” Clark said. “We can handle it,” Evan told him. He looked at Dempster. “That shouldn’t be too hard, right?” “I’m not overly concerned about it at this time,” Dempster said. “There is a small security station just above the parking garage, between the front entrance and the Old House restaurant.” Gardner pointed to the left of the entryway. “Usually two or three men. They have monitors for the cameras in there too.” “So the cameras are really gonna be tricky.” “We can work it out.” “Are there cameras in the parking garage?” Dempster asked. “No, there aren’t.” “Good to know.” “Also,” Gardner said, “another thing you need to be aware of is the stairway to the right of the front desk.” “Why’s that? Where does it go?” “It goes up to a computer room—a place where guests can go to check their e-mail or use a computer for whatever reason. It’s available twenty-fours hours a day, but there’s no staff up there after eight.” “Not much of a problem,” Clark said.


“Unless a guest or two happen to come down from there unexpectedly,” Jimmy said. “What’s beyond the computer room?” Dempster asked. “The engineering area,” Gardner said. “You need to enter a code on the keypad to get in, but there aren’t any cameras in there.” “Can you get that code?” “What for?” “We need everything we can get.” Gardner glared at him for a brief moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I’ll give that to you.” “How much longer before we do this, you think?” “Oh, I’d say at least a few days,” Gardner said. “maybe a week. I’ll let you know when everything’s right.” For the next half-hour they went over the rest of the hotel, learning more about the security systems, where the exits were, how many people were likely to be on duty on any given night. “Okay,” Dempster said, “we’ll figure out more of this in the next day or two. Where’s that Santa Fe map?” Jimmy raced into the other room and returned a few seconds later unfolding it. “Here’s the Eldorado,” Evan said, pointing. “On the south side here, where the entrance is, is San Francisco Street. The cross streets are


Guadalupe and Sandoval, and behind the hotel is Johnson.” “I suspect we can all read,” Gardner said. “Shut up,” Dempster told him. “The fastest route,” Evan continued, “I think would be to take Sandoval to Cerrillos here, then take that to St. Francis Drive. It goes all the way out to I-25, a direct shot all the way to Albuquerque.” “Those are the biggest streets in town,” Clark said. “Even at two or three in the morning they’ve gotta have traffic, and I bet they’re swarming with cops.” “This town isn’t that big,” Evan said. “There won’t be too many cars out at that time. But you’re right as far as the cops go. We’ll have to make sure we drive within the speed limit and obey all the laws.” Gardner laughed and said, more to himself than anyone else, “Obey the law.” Dempster glared at him. “Something funny?” Taken aback and then humbled, Gardner frowned and turned away. Dempster looked back at the map. “Is that really the best getaway, you think?” “The downtown area is completely congested,” Evan told him. “The streets are tiny with too many stop signs and too many people walking around because of all the bars and stuff around there. Taking the bigger streets makes the most sense. It’s way too easy to get trapped otherwise.” “Okay,” Dempster said. “Tomorrow we should all drive around the area.


Test the route casually during the daytime, see how it feels, look for alternate routes.” He walked around the table and put his hand on Gardner’s shoulder. “You know what you’re supposed to do, right? You understand your part in all of this?” Gardner ran fingers across his brow and looked at Dempster. “Sure,” he said, then licked his dry lips. “Yeah, I know.” Dempster looked the man over. He didn’t like him and didn’t trust him. The way he held himself, the attitude that seeped from his very being, the man was a determined amateur with little else going for him. Dempster still wasn’t wholly confident with Evan, Clark and Jimmy, but he knew they at least understood the rules of the game. If things went awry, the first thing Gardner was going to do was talk. That was obvious just from looking at him. He would sing and sing and sing, but that was only if he didn’t let the cat out of the bag earlier, before they even got started. “All seems pretty good so far, I’d say,” Clark said, looking over the layout again as he fished out a cigarette. “What’d you think?” “I’m not concerned about the job itself,” Dempster said. “I’m concerned about everything operating smoothly.” This drew pause from everyone in the room. When Dempster saw he had their full attention he spoke. “Years ago I was on a job with some other guys in Indiana,” he said. “One of these guys had a twelve-year-old son who managed to figure out what we were up to,


thanks to Dad being a bit dim-witted and letting too much slip. When we got to the job site it was crawling with cops.” He continued, though as he did he looked at each of them in turn. “Everyone knew what had happened,” he said. “We cruised on by, forgetting the whole deal, stopped and picked up the kid and all rendezvoused back at the house we were using as a hideout. I don’t want to bore you with all the details, so let’s just say, to make a long story short, both father and son were buried in the cellar of that house.” At the end of this last sentence he made sure he was looking good and hard at Gardner. Already Gardner was wiping his brow again. It gleamed with perspiration. The look in his eyes was deep stark fear, as though he’d just discovered that the monster in his childhood closet was real, and after all these years it had finally revealed itself to be the man that now stood across from him. “I imagine it’s agonizing,” Dempster said, “knowing you’re digging your own grave.” Nervously Gardner looked into Dempster’s eyes, then looked past him and into some other world as comprehension set in. Dempster winked at the man, nodded to the other three, and left the room.


2

In bed that night, he almost felt paralyzed. Through the darkness he saw pictures on the ceiling above him. He wasn’t sure if his eyes were opened or closed, but it didn’t matter because the images were there anyway, and they made him anxious. Flickering images of what had been and what might be, cranking forward and back in time. Fact and fiction mixing together, swirling about, separating. He saw himself standing outside of the Eldorado on the steps, gun in hand, cops and police cars surrounding him on all sides, guns drawn and aimed, trapping him, screaming at him. There was blood on the steps and he didn’t know whose it was. Sirens blared. Innocent bystanders stood on the street beyond, watching. They were all people he knew, or had known over the years to one extent or other, from Mike and Angela to Freddy Skeele to the homeless bum who’d asked him for change. Shelley was there, rubbing her belly. Charlie Powers was there but he had a beard again. The girl in the red sweater he’d seen at Essentials was off to one side. Donald Wycza and his twelve-year-old son Lawrence stood positioned as though posing for an oil painting. And Sandra Colvin was there, hanging her saddened head, hand half-mast in futile outreach. All of them watched with


shame and disappointment as the cops screamed and told him to drop his gun, it was all over and done with and he was dead unless he dropped his gun right now. Every cop had his face.


Chapter Seven

The ringing of his cell phone jolted him up from his restless sleep. Climbing out of bed and crossing the room, he saw on the Caller I.D. that it was Freddy Skeele, unplugged the phone from its charger and answered. “Hope I’m not calling too early,” Freddy said. Dempster looked at the bedside clock and saw it was seven-thirty. “No problem,” he said rubbing his eyes. “You in Albuquerque?” “Not yet. Getting ready to leave soon.” “What’s up?” “I just wanted to check in, see how things were coming along. Have the boys whipped into shape?” “I think they’ll be fine.” Then through a yawn he said, “Yeah, they


whipped into shape pretty quick. Much faster than I’d expected, actually.” “Good, and have you met Gardner yet?” “Went over the layout with him yesterday.” “How does it look?” “Looks pretty good so far. I don’t see any real problems with it.” “Good, I’m glad to hear you say that.” “But honestly, Freddy, I don’t mean to sound disrespectful or anything, but I don’t like Gardner. I trust him like I’d trust an angry Great White shark.” “Demp, I’m starting to get the feeling,” Freddy said with a chuckle, “that you don’t like anybody the first time you meet them.” “I don’t trust anybody the first time I meet them. Not anybody in this line of work.” He walked into the bathroom and filled a glass with tap water. “If anything goes wrong, that man is gonna talk. Even if things go right, I think he’s gonna talk—to somebody.” The water was cold. It felt good on his dry throat and helped refresh him into the day. He studied himself in the bathroom mirror briefly, not sure what to make of the reflection. “All right,” Freddy said. “What do you want to do about it?” “Not much we can do, is there?” The sound of birds for a moment. Then, “Look,” Freddy said, “you know I’m not going to steer you into some bum deal.” “I never said anything of the sort.”


“I had a good long talk with Gardner the day you left Ohio. He understands the score.” “Understanding it and being a part of it are two different things,” Dempster said, thinking back to his conversation with Sandra in Oklahoma about people who play tricks on themselves. “He’s a part of it,” Freddy told him. “He’s an integral part.” “I’m just saying is all.” He drank down the rest of his water. “If he talks, if he blows this—and this doesn’t just go for Gardner, it goes for the other guys as well. If I find out this thing is fucked, I swear I’ll kill all four of them.” “It won’t come to that.” “I hope you’re right.” “It won’t.” A tense, uncomfortable pause, then, “I gotta go. We’re heading out in just a few minutes. Charlie or I will call you this afternoon or evening, all right?” “All right.” The moment he hung up, a confrontation broke out down the hall.

2

“Jesus, man, let him go.”


Clark stood in one of the bedroom doorways, face twisted in a disgusted grimace. When he saw Dempster he backed out, and in the bedroom Dempster saw Jimmy on his knees with Evan on top of him, a thick arm wrapped around his throat, the other arm over his face, covering his eyes, and he was pulling backwards, a knee pressed into Jimmy’s back. “What’s going on?” “Son of a bitch was going through my bag,” Evan said through gritted teeth. “I swear I wasn’t.” Jimmy choked, gasped for breath. “Hell you weren’t, I saw you.” “You got it wrong,” Jimmy cried. “All right,” Dempster said stepping into the room, “let him go.” “Break his goddamn neck is what I’m gonna do.” “I said let him go.” Evan threw him a wild glare. At the very same second Dempster’s fist cracked him in the eye. Evan’s head snapped to one side and Jimmy fell away from his arms. Both men collapsed to the floor, Jimmy trying to swallow air, Evan with his hands on his face. “You’re not in a fucking schoolyard,” Dempster told them. Evan sat up, a small gash at the corner of his left eye. Still sucking air, Jimmy rubbed his neck, glanced at Evan and then to the floor. “I swear I wasn’t going through your bag,” he said.


“Then just what the hell were you doing with it?” “Moving it,” Jimmy said, and Dempster saw tears in the man’s eyes. “You obviously didn’t notice, but you tossed your bag on top of mine this morning. You happened to walk in right when I picked it up to move it.” “Bullshit,” Evan said. “Why the hell would I want to go through your bag?” “I dunno,” Evan licked his fingers and brought them to his eye, “why would you?” “The only reason I had for touching your stupid bag was to get it off of my bag.” Dempster studied Evan studying Jimmy. There was strength and confidence, a subtle yet sinister grin playing about his lips. Jimmy, on the other hand, was practically crying, still drawing deep breaths, his face red. The dynamic these two had was scary. Evan looked over at Dempster. He looked him up and down. His grin widened just the slightest bit, and his expression seemed to say, “Stay out of my business.” Dempster answered him with his eyes. “What’s gonna stop me?” Evan read it, checked it, and thankfully decided not to test it. “Why so freaked about your bag, anyway?” Clark asked, then stuffed a cigarette between his lips and fumbled around for his lighter. “My bag, isn’t it? My personal belongings. My privacy. How would you


feel if I was going through your shit?” “I’d at least have enough sense to ask what you were doing first,” Clark told him, and found his lighter. “I’d at least do that much.” “Well, maybe we’ll just have to see about that,” Evan told him. Clark lit his cigarette. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?” “All right,” Dempster said, “that’s enough. Just shut the hell up, all of you. You’re acting like goddamn third graders. Any second you’re gonna start pointing fingers saying who started it.” “Now, hang on,” Evan said. “Shut up,” Dempster snapped, then paused, and finally shook his head. “I thought you guys were getting better, growing up.” The sigh that escaped him sounded like wind through trees. “Now I see that’s all a crock.” “Jesus Christ,” Evan said. “Who do you think you are? Big tough man steps into the picture and starts telling us what to do and what not to do. Big tough man wants to boss us around. Big tough man who screwed up and got nabbed by the cops and spent the last five years behind bars.” He sneered. “Why should we be listening to you?” A long pause played out. Taut silence enveloped everything. Then, “But you’re right about one thing,” he said, “we’re not in a fucking schoolyard, we’re not in the third grade, so you”—he pointed at Dempster—“stop acting like the goddamn teacher.” Dempster studied the man’s cold dark eyes. To his surprise, it was the first time that he felt a genuine respect for Evan Wolfe. It also solidified in his


mind the fact that somewhere down the line, there was going to be some very serious trouble. “If you have a problem with me,” Dempster said. “If you have a problem with the way things are, feel free to call Mister Skeele and talk to him about it. Or feel free to swing at me.” He stepped closer. “If it’ll make you feel better then go ahead. Hit me. Prove to yourself that you’ve got guts.” Evan clenched both hands into tight fists. His face flushed and his arms shook. Then, in the blink of an eye, his fingers relaxed. “Forget it,” he said. “You’re a waste of my time.” “I’m a waste of time? Barely out of diapers and I’m a waste of time?” “Hold on,” Clark said, trying to interfere. “Shut up,” Dempster told him. He looked at each of them individually, then as a whole, and sighed once more. “Pack your shit and get out.” “What?” “You heard me.” “Now wait a minute—” “I’m tired of waiting. Get going.” “Now come on,” Jimmy said. “We have just as much right on this thing as you do. Mister Skeele hired us all. We need this job. We all need this job.” “That’s right,” Dempster said, “and you said you would do anything to make sure it goes right. So here’s what we’re gonna do.” He poked his finger into Evan’s chest. “You’ve been given a chance to split. If you stay, mark my


word, I’ll kill any one of you that doesn’t do what I tell them, got it?” “Yeah,” Clark said stepping between everybody, the peacekeeper. “Yeah, we get it. Nothing like this will happen again, right guys?” Evan and Jimmy glared at one another. Then, “Right,” Jimmy said softly, defeated. That sinister grin returned to Evan’s face, larger than before. “Right,” he said, “no more trouble.” He looked into Dempster’s eyes. “I promise,” he said. Dissatisfied but forcing himself to let it go, Dempster stepped aside and watched Clark and Evan pass by, leaving the room like punks being herded from a classy restaurant. Jimmy stayed behind, fingers fidgeting. He wiped his face, then rubbed his neck. “I really wasn’t going into his bag. I was just moving it. I don’t want anything to do with his stuff; I don’t give a crap. Honest. Why the fuck would I care?” Dempster looked at him. You really don’t know what you’re doing, man, he thought. You’re way out of your league. This isn’t the line of work for you. You’re too good of a person inside, you dumb bastard. “Jimmy, have you ever read Nietzsche?” “Huh?” “Friedrich Nietzsche. Ever read him?” Jimmy moved his head slowly from side to side, then wiped his face again.


“‘He who fights with monsters should take care that he himself does not become a monster’.” He looked into the hallway and then to Jimmy, who stood confused and concerned, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, face red. You fool, Dempster thought. The dumb look in your eyes. Things can’t go on this way for you. Get out while you still can—if you still can. He looked away and told him, “Get out of my sight.” Jimmy got up and stumbled out of the room. Dempster stood there a moment and regarded the two bags, each nondescript and uninteresting. He couldn’t help wondering about Evan’s bag, though, given the man’s reaction to it being touched. He left and made his way back through the hall to his own room, picturing in his mind the image of himself he’d seen earlier in the bathroom mirror. “‘When you gaze long into the abyss,’” he concluded, “‘the abyss also gazes into you’.”

3

Hours later, after going over the escape route three times and checking out a couple of alternate routes, Dempster found himself pulling into the parking lot of De Vargas Mall without even thinking about it.


Stupid asshole, he said to himself, knowing exactly why he’d come here. He’d come to see his old friend Mike Goodman, like he said he would. His best friend since the first grade. The friend he’d smoked his first cigarette with. First discussed girls with. The same friend who once punched him in the face to get his car keys away when he was too drunk to drive. Who stayed up all night to help him with his math homework, and when he still couldn’t get it right, let him copy his. Someone who had remained his friend over the years in spite of his many flaws. That’s why he was here at the mall, he told himself. To see his best friend. More powerful than this, however, though he tried not to admit it, was a desire to see the redheaded girl he’d seen the day before. A burning desire, like match heads flaring. He remembered exactly how she looked. Her soft, clear and pale skin, the only make-up a small bit of lipstick, red to match her hair. Her blue eyes tired and frustrated, giving them an air of indifference that Dempster found appealing. The way she moved, slowly and with a certain poise that went well with the rest of her presentation. She stirred something ferocious and primitive inside him, and he wanted her in incomprehensible ways that brought about an unsettling ache which started in his chest and went down to his knees. Contradictory to this, however, he also felt fear. There had been something that drew him like a magnet, while at the same time repelled him. He climbed out of the car, pocketed his keys, and made his way to


Essentials. The music hadn’t changed since the day before. Still the same terrible dance song. The lighting was still awful, the atmosphere worse. Instead of heading straight for the book department, this time he took the long way around, through the video section, moving slowly, deliberately, browsing the new releases and others around him. Not a sign did he see of her. Mike was in the literature section with some sort of beeper gun, using it to scan barcodes on the backs of books. When the gun made one sound, he placed that book back on the shelf, and when it made another sound, he tossed the book onto a cart. “Hey, Perky.” Mike scanned another book, tossed it onto the cart and looked up. “Hey, Jerky. You have a good night?” “Could’ve been worse.” He pulled a copy of The Moviegoer from the shelf. “What about you?” “Wasn’t bad,” Mike said. “Mostly spent the night watching TV.” “Anything good?” “Is there ever anything good on TV?” “I dunno. I haven’t really seen it in years.” “There’s nothing other than crappy reality shows these days,” Mike told him. “Even worse are the reality game shows, where they do things like have ten women each pick an envelope that could have anywhere from zero to a


million dollars in it. Then they all date the same guy, and if the guy rejects them, they’re out of the game. No love, no money, nothing. If the guy falls in love with one, then that girl has to pick between the love of this man or the envelope.” He shook his head and tossed another book onto the cart. “Lame.” Dempster replaced The Moviegoer on the shelf. “Guess I haven’t missed much in that area,” he said. “You haven’t.” “Say, Mike, I wanna ask you something and it’s gonna sound stupid.” “Won’t be the first time.” “That’s true.” He reached for a Chuck Palahniuk book then stopped and let his hand drop. “There was a girl working over in the video section last night. Real cute redhead.” Mike scanned another book, put it back on the shelf. He nodded slowly as he reached for yet another. “That would be Carly,” he said. Carly. He liked the name. “What’s her story?” “I don’t know.” “What’d you mean you don’t know? You work with her, don’t you?” “Lots of people work here, Demp, and just about everyone hates working here. As a result, we all associate with each other as little as possible.” “That seems weird.” “Yeah, maybe, but that’s how it is.”


“So you don’t know anything about her?” “I know her name is Carly. Carly Whittaker.” He shrugged. “She seems pretty cool.” He threw another book onto the cart and looked up at him. “She’s a bit younger than you.” “She can’t be that much younger than me.” “Don’t forget, you did age while you were locked up.” The statement struck a painful chord inside him. He realized he had no choice but to brush it off. “So that’s all you can tell me about her.” “Unfortunately, yeah, I don’t have anything else to offer on the subject.” He scanned another book. “Sorry.” Suddenly Dempster’s mind clouded with guilt for pushing Mike unfairly. “All right, cool,” he said. “Whatever. You get your lunch any time soon?” “In another twenty or thirty minutes, yeah. Where you wanna go?” “So far I’ve eaten at the pizza place and that’s it. We could go there again, or you could pick something else. Doesn’t matter to me.” “Okay, well, I’ve still got a little while here. I’ll think about it.” For the next fifteen minutes Dempster browsed around the store. He read the backs of a dozen books, found a couple that interested him, but decided not to buy them. He sampled CDs at a listening station and discovered that he didn’t like contemporary pop music with the exceptions of Liz Phair and the Hollis Wake. He studied the movie rentals. Some looked good and some


looked bad. Some looked abysmal. He was reading the back of a video box when his arm bumped the shelf and knocked several movies to the floor. He crouched down to pick them up, and as he gathered them into his arm a pair of feet entered his vision. He looked up, then stiffened, staring at the red hair and blue eyes of Carly Whittaker. They were quiet for some moments, ogling one another, each trying to read the other’s mind. Up close she was even prettier, and though he felt that it was high time he looked away, he found it impossible. “I saw you in here yesterday,” she said. “Could be,” he told her, “given that I was in here yesterday.” Once again he tried looking away. But her eyes were like magnets that pulled his eyes to hers. He watched her place a hand on her hip, and shift her weight to one leg. She was wearing jeans today, and a white blouse, which made the redness of her hair stand out like flames on a snow hill. “Well?” she said. Dempster looked deeper into her eyes. She was daring him. “Well what?” “You gonna put those movies back on the shelf?” He felt the videos in his hands. He’d forgotten he was holding them, and suddenly they were very heavy. He managed to break eye contact, turn, and put them back on the shelf.


He wasn’t sure what his thoughts were, but he didn’t want to look at her again. He was afraid that if he turned back and looked into those blue eyes, he would never see anything else as long as he lived. “You okay?” “Sure.” “You seem nervous,” she said. “Am I scaring you?” “I don’t scare easily.” He knew that much was true. He could smell her, feel her electricity. Only now did he realize that she wasn’t wearing her green apron. He told himself not to, but looked back into her eyes. And cursed himself. “It just seems,” she said, “that your I.Q. has suddenly dropped to doorknob status.” “Thing is…” His voice was tight, though he did manage a grin. “I like redheads too much.” There was nothing complimentary in the way he said it. She smiled as sparks came into her eyes. “In what way?” Before he could come up with the proper phrasing, his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, looked at the Caller I.D., and saw that the number was Charlie’s cell. Connecting, he said, “Charlie, hang on a second.” Then to Carly Whittaker, “See ya.” She smiled, then turned on her heel and vanished. He brought the phone to his ear and asked Charlie what was up. “We’re in Dallas,” Charlie said. “The flight out of here doesn’t leave for


another hour.” He cleared his throat. “We’re suddenly having a bit of an issue. Freddy hasn’t completely explained it to me but it looks like our fence man in Albuquerque is no longer our fence man.” “What?” “Guess Freddy got some dirt on him and gave him the boot.” “That’s not good,” Dempster said. “I know, it’s a bit unsettling but don’t worry about it. Not like it’s never happened before.” Charlie paused and cleared his throat again. “He just lined someone up in Corrales. Guy by the name of Frazier. Here, wait, I’ll give you the new information.” “Call me with that when you get to Albuquerque, if you don’t mind,” Dempster told him. “I’m out and about right now.” “Yeah, sure thing.” “This Frazier guy—you know anything about him?” “Not really. Freddy’s apparently worked with him before, says he’s a good guy, can move the stuff real fast. Said he’d almost wished he’d gone with him in the first place.” “Wonder why he didn’t.” “I’ll call you when we get to Albuquerque.” “All right.” They disconnected. Dempster looked to where Carly had been standing. She wasn’t there but he could still see her, even when he closed his eyes. She


had branded herself onto his brain, and that annoyed him. With everything else going on, the last thing he needed was to have some girl thrown into the mix. Suddenly Mike’s voice came over the store’s loudspeaker. “Jack Dempster, please come to the book information desk. Your party is waiting with a message for you.” He didn’t like being beckoned over the P.A. like that. The second he started walking over he saw people looking at him. Now they knew who he was. They were saying to themselves, “That’s Jack Dempster.” Mike was at the computer, typing away. “Hey, Jerky, I’m sorry. Turns out Philip just went to lunch, so I’m actually stuck here another hour. I dunno if you wanna come back or not, but I don’t imagine that you want to spend another hour here.” Dempster had no idea who Philip was. “That’s cool,” he said. “I’ve got some other stuff to do. How about we play it by ear. If I can, I’ll stop back by, and if things work out, they work out.” “All right. Again, I’m sorry.” “Nothing to be sorry about.” “Hey, how about dinner tonight? You still haven’t seen Angela.” “What are you thinking?” “I dunno, we could make something at home.” He quickly raised his hand. “Don’t worry, I know how you are—nothing too formal. You know that’s


not our style. Hell, we could even order a pizza or something like that, if you like. Or we could go out.” Dempster thought on it a moment, then said, “Yeah, all right. That sounds good. I don’t have anything going on.” Mike wrote down directions to the house. Dempster glanced at them, and then stuck the paper into his pocket and asked, “What time you want me there?” “When is good for you?” “Whenever.” “How about eight?” “Eight it is.” They said goodbye, and Dempster walked through the store, thinking and wondering—worrying—about the change in fence men, but finding his eyes searching for the intriguing redhead who apparently frightened him. When he didn’t find her, figuring it to be a good thing, he made his exit, and met his car halfway across the parking lot. It was nice and sunny out. He fished into his pocket for his keys, and as he did, he heard the two-tap honk of a car horn. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a red Toyota Tercel stopped directly behind him, blocking in his Honda. Behind the wheel, staring at him with those magnetic eyes, was Carly Whittaker. “Where are you going?” Dempster looked at her. The odd stir of excitement he felt inside angered


him. He wanted nothing to do with her, yet here he was taking a step toward the Tercel. “I’m busy,” he said. “Busy hanging out at Essentials every day?” This angered him more, but still he took another step. He didn’t want to, he cursed himself for doing it, but it was as though he had no control of himself. “I’m fed up with this neighborhood,” she said. Her tone was casual. “I’m fed up with this whole town. Nothing to do, always hanging around, waiting for something to happen. And nothing ever happens.” She looked at him. “I’m dying for something to happen.” “So, go do something about it,” he told her. “Well, I can’t do it alone.” “That’s your problem.” “Don’t you wanna give me a hand?” “In what way?” “In having a good time. Having some fun. Finding something to do that doesn’t involve so much damn waiting.” “Sorry,” he said, “I think you’re on your own.” Yet, still, even as he said it, he took another step forward. “You wanna hop in?” she asked. “Not especially.” “Sure you do.” She reached across and opened the passenger door.


“Let’s go get some lunch.” When Dempster didn’t budge, she told him, “It’s just lunch. You have to eat sometime.” Staring at her, he let his eyes ask many questions, though he sadly found that these questions were mostly directed at himself. Before he knew what he was doing, he was climbing into the Tercel and closing the door. She pulled away, looped through the parking lot, and they left De Vargas Mall. After a minute she said, “You still have no name.” “I have a name, just haven’t given it to you.” She smiled, gave him a sidelong glance. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” “I’ve already seen yours, Carly.” A small flinch, her confidence suffered a momentary lapse. Then it quickly returned; she smiled. “You a detective or something?” “Closer to a something,” he said, and eased back in his seat. “A something that still has no name.” “I’m Jack.” “A something named Jack.” She nodded. “I guess that’ll do.” For a few moments they didn’t speak. The car was filled with the rattling purr of its engine and the wind whipping through the open windows. “You weren’t working,” he said. “You’re observant,” she told him. “Nope. Not today.”


“So why were you hanging out there?” “Not that it’s any of your business, but I was getting my check. And buying a book.” “What book?” She reached into the back seat, then dropped the paperback into his lap. Astrology, Karma and Transformation: The Inner Dimensions of the Birth Chart, by Stephen Arroyo. “Looks interesting,” he said, not very interested. “‘Life is not the mere play of blind chance,’” she said with a sensual smirk on her face, “‘but has an existence that is dependent upon conditions.’” “Bhagavad Gita?” “Buddha.” “Where are we going?” “This way,” she told him, emphasizing with a head gesture. “We getting something to eat?” “Don’t you wanna take a ride?” “I don’t like when people answer questions with questions.” She made a right turn onto a street called West Alameda. “Let’s just drive a bit,” she said. There was a knowing grin on her face, faint and delicate, but assertive. The street seemed to stretch on forever. It was lined with houses of various shapes and sizes in sundry states of condition. To the right were hills


with small side roads that twisted and wound up into nebulous residential worlds, hidden by trees and mounds of dirt. To the left the ground sloped downward at a steep grade. Rooftops peeked over the edge as though Kilroy Was Here, some of them reflecting the sun at a more than uncomfortable brightness. Off in the far distance, a series of mountains stood so majestic that the sight of them was like a beautifully executed oil painting. “How long you lived here?” he asked. “Three years.” “Where you from?” “The merry ol’ land of Oz.” He looked at her, and realized how much she frustrated him. She smiled. “I’m from Kentucky.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah.” “You don’t have an accent.” “Oh my God, what are the police going to say?” They went for a minute without speaking. As the houses became sparser and the land opened up around them, Carly made a right turn onto a dirt road that Dempster didn’t catch the name of. “Where we headed?” “There’s a really beautiful spot up this way,” she said. “You can see the whole city.” Another sidelong glance. “You don’t mind, do you?”


He shrugged. “You’re driving.” The trees loomed over them. Millions of shadows flickered about. The terrain was rough and they bounced around in their seats. The car created giant clouds of dust behind them as they ascended the hill, crested the peak, and drove slowly into a large empty opening where not a single house stood, and the trees were few and far between. Carly cut the wheel hard to the right and the car turned until the windshield’s view was filled with the city. Endless rock formations dotted the nearby landscape. Within it the houses rose up from the ground like turtles emerging from their shells, while beyond this the city was larger than Dempster had imagined. It filled almost every window of the car, and looked like a highly complex and perfectly constructed model with an additional breath of life thrown into it. Carly switched off the engine. They sat for a minute in complete silence. Then: “I love it up here,” she said, gazing through the windshield. “It’s so peaceful. I like to come up here when I need to check out from the rest of my life.” She looked at him. “Don’t you think it’s beautiful?” He hesitantly met her eyes but only allowed himself a quick glimpse and turned back to the view. “It’s gorgeous,” he said, and called himself an asshole. He told himself the best thing to do was to get out of the car and go for a walk. Walk all the way back to his own car, forget all of this, and go check in on the


guys and make sure the house wasn’t burnt down. He looked at her again and saw her watching him. His throat constricted and he refused to look at her. Instead he looked at the door. He wanted to open it, begged himself to open it. Begged himself to get out and walk away, make the long trek back to his car, back to the mall. If the timing worked out he might still be able to meet Mike for lunch. He begged himself to do this. Instead he looked at her, and was immediately mesmerized by her deep blue eyes. She leaned towards him. He looked at the door handle and begged himself once more. “Look at me.” Then her eyes entranced him again. She moved closer. He moved closer. He felt lightheaded. Dizzy. And suddenly his arms were around her, and he was kissing her. The sensation, the feeling pulsating through him—he shuddered with passion as his hand caressed her waist. Her hand stroked his chest, tickled his belly, and found its way between his legs. She began maneuvering him through his pants. And he responded. Her lips were suction cups, and as she moved her hand, rubbed herself against him, he felt the temperature of his body rising. “Cum for me,” she whispered, working him faster, her breath hot vapor against his face.


A part of him wanted to push her away, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t allow himself to, and really didn’t want to. Because he wanted it. He wanted it so bad that it was like a disease inside him. That’s what it is, he thought. You got her inside you like a fucking disease. But he wanted nothing more than to come before the eyes of this woman. Her grip tightened, encouraged his passion to rise. She worked him faster until he reached the boiling point. Then he let out a moan; his body writhed and instinctively he kissed her, as he pumped beneath the movement of her hand. He drew deep breaths and her magnetic blue eyes riveted into his own. Then, after the fact, he seized her hand and pulled it away, continuing to look into her beautiful blue eyes. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t find any words. She backed off, her face now a mess of confusion. “What’s the matter?” Still, he couldn’t talk. “What’s wrong?” Her tone was irritated. Next thing he knew he had opened the door. He climbed out of the car, turned around and looked at her. “Get out of here,” he said. “What’s up with you?” “I said beat it.” She stared at him. She was very calm but her eyes were wide. “I don’t get it,” she said.


He felt himself being pulled into her again. Those eyes were fucking powerful. “Please,” he said, “just go.” A moment passed. Then, with a subtle shrug, she started the car, backed out, gave a frustrated wave, and made her way down the lonely dusty road. He watched the car until it was out of sight.


Chapter Eight

Dempster arrived back at the house at three thirty on the nose, and found the guys hanging out in the kitchen. Jimmy and Evan sat at the table, seemingly chummy, as though nothing confrontational had transpired that morning, while Clark stood near the sink telling some anecdote or other, making more hand gestures than a deaf Italian, the left hand with a cigarette between its fingers. The moment he stepped into the room, the conversation ended. Dempster took in the sight of all three of them, crossed over to the table and sat down. “What’s up?” “Spent the whole morning going over the route,” Clark said, smoke


seeping from his nose. “Found a couple alternative routes but it still looks like the best way is what we discussed last night.” “That’s what I decided too,” Dempster said. He looked at Evan and Jimmy. “You guys talk with Mister Skeele or Charlie Powers today?” “Yeah,” Evan said. “Charlie told us we have a new fence. Guy named Frazier.” “Any of you know anything about him?” “Nothing other than Mister Skeele’s worked with him before and he’s from Illinois, moved out here about a year ago.” “Did Charlie give you his information?” “Yeah. Not much, of course. It’s written down over there by the phone.” Dempster rose from his seat. He looked at the information scribbled on the yellow legal pad beside the phone. It merely said Frazier, then was followed by an address in Corrales and a telephone number. It wasn’t any more information than they’d had on Kolata—the original fence—but somehow Dempster wasn’t satisfied. “Did he tell you anything about why Mister Skeele got rid of Kolata?” “Not much,” Evan said. “He didn’t sound clear on it himself. Apparently Mister Skeele learned that Kolata has gotten involved with some cop, but that’s about all he was able to tell us.” “All right, I’m gonna talk to those guys pretty soon. I’ll see if I can’t get any more information about what’s going on.”


“Is it that big of a deal?” Evan asked. Dempster threw him a contemptible look. “It can be, yes.” Evan’s eyebrows bounced once in a twitch, then he looked down and studied the table. Dempster wanted to grab him by the neck and shake some sense into him. Smack him around and ask him how dumb he could be. “What about Gardner? Any word from him today?” “No, not a thing. We’re all going to the Eldorado tonight for a drink. Putting on our best clothes, gonna look like high-class businessmen.” “All right.” He went to the refrigerator and got himself a soda. “I’m gonna stop by and check it out tomorrow. Let me know if there’s anything different from what we learned last night—anything I should look into or be aware of.” “Of course.” He popped the tab on his soda and listened to it fizz. The hiss sparked his memory to the sound of heavy breathing. Carly beside him. Lips brushing his ear. The sight of her blue magnetic eyes. He left the kitchen.

2


Half an hour later Freddy called him on his cell phone. “You have nothing to worry about with Frazier,” he said. “I’ve worked with him several times before. He’s good. Made more connections out here in a year than he did in five back in Naperville.” “Guess I’m wondering,” Dempster said, “why you didn’t go with him right from the get-go.” There was a pause, a sigh, then another pause, more drawn out than the first. “Kolata and I go back a long time,” Freddy said. “Granted, we’ve never been especially close, but we’d worked together on and off for over twenty years.” “I don’t remember him.” “Well, you don’t know everyone I’ve ever worked with.” “So why’d you dump him? What’s this I hear about a cop?” “Retired cop,” Freddy told him. “Or shall I say terminated. Guy named Paul Campion, kicked off the force a few months back for brutality. Other officers as well as several witnesses caught him torturing a robbery suspect off Central Avenue—had the guy handcuffed and pressed against his squad car. He was shocking him in the testicles with a taser.” “Sounds like a fun guy.” “He already had an ugly track record of torture and abuse,” Freddy said. “This kind of sealed the deal for him.” “Guy that messed up, why isn’t he behind bars?”


“Just lucky, I guess. Who knows how these things work? The problem I had was not that the man Kolata hooked up with was a psychopath. It’s that he was a cop. And as the saying goes: once a cop, always a cop. A corrupt cop is even worse. And then add to that the fact that he’s a psychopath, and you’ll begin to see why I no longer wanted Kolata involved.” “I’m beginning to,” Dempster said. “But we weren’t dealing with Campion, we were dealing with Kolata.” “If you deal with Kolata,” Freddy said, “you now also deal with Campion.” “This is all news to me.” “Me too,” Freddy said, tone indignant. “It wasn’t long ago that Kolata and I set all of this up. It’s only in the past few days that the two of them have officially come to this new business arrangement.” “So you opted them out.” “What would you have done?” “I would have gone with Frazier in the first place.” “No you wouldn’t. Not if you didn’t know anything about Campion.” “Okay, so what’s wrong with Frazier?” “There’s nothing wrong with Frazier. He’s very good at what he does and he’s about as threatening as a cotton swab.” Here he paused again. Then, “Christ, Demp, don’t worry so much about it. Everything will be fine. As far as Kolata and Campion are concerned, the job is a bust.” “And what happens when they find out it isn’t? They’re bound to read


about it or see it on the news.” “Information leaked out,” Freddy told him. “That’s why we’re not doing the job anymore. If the hotel is robbed now it wasn’t us, it’s whoever got this privileged information. They built upon our plan and pulled it themselves. I explained everything to them. They understood just fine. Nothing to worry about.” “I still say it’s a big risk, especially if this Campion guy is as nuts as you’re making him out to be.” “Don’t worry about it. Really, everything will be fine. The only difference now is that you take the goods to Frazier in Corrales instead of to Kolata in Albuquerque. You’ll actually save about twenty minutes driving time. Don’t get too concerned. It’s not like this kind of thing hasn’t ever happened before. And of course Charlie and I will be there when you guys show up. You just worry about your end of things. Make sure you take care of those boys.” They talked for a couple more minutes and when they hung up Dempster felt a little better. Not terrific, but better. Sometimes you have to do the best with the lot you’re given, he thought, and his mind cranked back to his days in his 70 square foot cell, reading books and out-of-date magazines, doing push-ups and sit-ups until his body numbed. Cheating at Solitaire when he was feeling down. Writing poetry and listening to music in his head. Trying, even in the pitch-black darkness of night as he lay in bed, to see a flicker of light at the end of a long and lonesome


tunnel. Telling himself over and over again that it wouldn’t last forever, someday he would be free again. He’d see blue skies without being encircled by forty-foot walls. He’d see rivers and oceans and lakes with ducks, and they would be real, not just in his mind, not something on the television when he was good, but real life, swimming all around him, smothering him with more than he could stand. Some people say a duck’s quack doesn’t echo. What? Yeah, but it’s not true. Being locked away so long, surrounded by his solitude, other than his confining cell and a few privileged areas, life had become an illusion, something that passed before his eyes as he faded off to sleep, or just before he woke up in the morning. And in between these moments, even when he couldn’t remember exactly, he knew he was trying to find his way back to anywhere that wasn’t where he was; and he hoped he could last long enough to find it. Prayed he would still be around the day that they opened the door and let him out. On the darkest of days, he wondered where his hope had gone off to, and he scrambled around desperately to find it again, before he could find him saying goodbye to himself. That’s what kept him going. That’s how he made the best of it. The hope of returning to real life, but hopefully not the same life—hopefully something a


bit different than before. Hope, maybe, to eventually make things right. And then the day had finally come. He’d walked through the gates and seen the world again, real as real could be. Too real to even want to touch. And now, though maybe it wasn’t exactly as he’d hoped it would be, he’d been given something, and he was still making the best of it. He had no choice but to make the best of it.

3

Angela had made Chicken Scaloppini with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. It was served on the same plates Dempster remembered them having last time he’d had dinner with them seven or eight years ago. Olive green with faint criss-crossing lines and tiny brown dots. Not only had Angela not lost her ability to cook, she had actually improved considerably, which was something Dempster had thought impossible. The food, simple as it was, was exquisite. Dempster had brought along two bottles of wine, one red and one white, as well as a six-pack of beer. As promised, they sat informally in the living room, Angela on the couch, Mike in his barcalounger, and Dempster in a surprisingly cozy high-backed office chair. They sat in a semi-circle, plates on


their laps, glasses of red wine within easy reach. It wasn’t exactly like the old days but it was a fair enough simulation that everyone, for the most part, was relaxed. Dempster felt they almost could have been back in Ohio, before he’d been revealed for what he was, before Mike and Angela had decided to make a go of New Mexico and seriously pursue art careers. It almost felt like the simple beauty of long-time friends catching up. But it wasn’t quite. He could see reservation in Angela. Friendly and natural as she was, she was keeping something hidden. Dempster was pretty sure he knew what it was, though he had no intention of bringing it up—not unless she did first. “I remember when we went and saw the school production of Romeo and Juliet,” Mike said. “We must have been in the ninth or tenth grade.” “A long time ago,” Dempster said. Mike looked at Angela. “It was a packed house. Everyone was so taken by the play. On the edge of their seats. Finally it got to the point where Romeo thinks Juliet is dead. He’s just about to take the poison and die next to Juliet’s body when Jack yells at the top of his lungs, ‘She’s not really dead, you dumb ass! Go double check with Friar Laurence. How many times are you gonna make the same fucking mistake?’” Dempster laughed. “One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” “That was pretty funny,” Mike said.


“Yeah, until we got thrown out of the place.” “No, even that was kind of funny.” Mike turned to Angela again. “When the ushers came to our seats and told us to get up, Jack said, ‘What must be shall be,’ and as they ushered us out through the doors he exclaimed, ‘For never was a story of more woe than that of us getting thrown out of Romeo and Juliet’.” “A fun time,” Dempster said. “That wasn’t long before I dropped out.” “You guys were always troublemakers,” Angela said. “You know we were morons, honey,” Mike said, then contemplated his wine. “Hard to believe those days were already so long ago.” “Yeah, time sure flies,” Dempster said. “I remember Shelley was in that play, remember that? She was…oh who the hell was she? Lady Montague.” The smile faded from Mike’s face. “Who’s Shelley?” Angela asked. “Oh, uh, just a girl I dated back then,” Dempster said, reaching for his wine. An awkward silence passed through the room, fleeting but evident. Dempster exchanged a glance with Mike, and the knowledge that he’d goofed was confirmed. He changed subjects to the sculptures placed around the house. “I really like the work you’re doing.” “Thanks,” Angela said. “I’m still trying to figure out which pieces should


actually go into the show I’ve got coming up.” Dempster pointed to one in the corner of the room. It was a tall black vertebrate rising up from out of an open mouth. “I’m quite fond of that one,” he said. “Reminds me a bit of Kiki Smith, or maybe Louise Bourgeois. It’s totally your own thing, though. Very well done.” Angela’s face lit up. “You know who Kiki Smith and Louise Bourgeois are?” “I might be a troublemaker but I’m not stupid,” Dempster said, and took a sip of his wine. “Who are some of your influences?” Given the opportunity to talk about her work, Angela straightened up in her seat. The hint of concern that had been in her eyes all night was gone. “Well, I am a fan of the two you mentioned,” she said. “I was also inspired by a woman named Caitlin Greer, who was doing a lot of work around here for a while. I guess I’m big on a lot of British stuff, too. I really like Reg Butler and Lynn Chadwick a lot.” “I admire Butler,” Dempster said. “He learned how to sculpt without any formal training, from what I recall. Pretty much taught himself how to do it, mostly while working as a blacksmith, I believe.” “That’s right,” Angela said, still unable to hide her surprise. Her excitement actually seemed to grow. “I have to admit,” she said, “I’m very impressed. I didn’t expect you would ever follow something like this.” “I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m not familiar with Lynn Chadwick,”


Dempster told her. “Oh, he’s great.” “It’s a he?” “Yeah. He was important in establishing British post-war sculpture on… Hold on.” She set her plate beside her on the couch, bounced up to her feet and disappeared into the other room. Mike looked at him. His mouth, chewing chicken, smiled. And with his eyes he said something to the effect of, “Good job, man. You’re winning.” Angela returned with a large book on 20th Century British Sculpture. Dempster joined her on the couch, and for the next fifteen minutes they went through it, page by page.

4

Two hours later, the red wine gone, the white wine gone, the beer remaining in the fridge, Dempster and Mike sat in the living room, while Angela tended to the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. Mike stayed in his barcalounger. Dempster had taken over the couch. They sat quietly, groggy from the wine, listening to the clinks and clanks of Angela restoring culinary order.


Finally Dempster observed, “I don’t see any of your paintings on the walls.” “The few I’ve done lately,” Mike said, “are stacked haphazardly in the closet.” Before Dempster could speak he added, “And that’s where they stay.” Again, they were quiet a moment. Dempster regarded Angela’s sculptures around the room. It was a shame that Mike was allowing his work to be overshadowed by his own frustrations, while on the other hand Angela still trudged ahead, seeming to work at her craft harder than ever before. “Well,” he said, “I’m pissed that I don’t get to see the kind of stuff you’re doing these days.” “It’s nothing special,” Mike said. “Wasted time, wasted materials.” “What, are you painting pictures of dogs shooting pool, or sitting around a poker table with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths?” “No, but I’ve come to realize that everything I do is pointless.” He sneered. “I might as well be painting that kind of crap. At least someone with a low I.Q. and a beer gut would buy it.” Dempster inched up a bit, rested his elbows on his knees, and clasped his fingers. “I don’t think you understand the work you do,” he said. “Your technique is amazing. Hell, it was great even in grammar school. And once you found your way, your concepts were fantastic.” “I’ve never painted about anything,” Mike said, his eyes staring at the floor but not seeing it. He was looking into himself, torturing himself for no


good reason. “That’s bullshit,” Dempster told him. “You paint about fundamental issues. I’ve seen it. Angela’s seen it. Others have seen it and I know you’ve seen it too. You have plenty going on in your work—life and death, violence, healing, loss. Even when your work is vague, there’s always a powerful invisible presence, and the point, whether you want to see it or not, is there.” “What I see is a man well-versed in the art of wasting time and fucking up,” Mike said. His eyes shifted from the floor to the sculpture Dempster had pointed out earlier. “A couple years ago, just as I was about to change jobs, this couple from New York came in. They had just moved here, and they were going to open a gallery. They came to us to design their logo, which I thought was kind of funny, given that, supposedly, they were surrounded by artists. The two of them fell in love with me. It seemed that, in their eyes, I could do no wrong. This girl I worked with, Melissa, mentioned that I was a painter, and George and Pooky—that’s right, her name was Pooky—demanded to see my work.” Here his eyes flicked to Dempster, then quickly retreated back to the sculpture. “They praised me like mad,” he said. “Compared me to some pretty impressive names, ranked me up there with the best and said that I was without a doubt an up and comer. I was going to be big. They told me that I had to show in their gallery, and said they would promote me like crazy.” “Sounds pretty good.” “I’m not through yet. I said yes to the invitation, of course; and then a


week later, over dinner at their house, I said no to a different type of invitation. I’m sure you know the kind I mean. After that I never heard from them again. The gallery never opened. I assume they either moved back to New York or they’re still here and we just haven’t crossed paths, which is fine with me.” Dempster watched him for a long time, not knowing what to say. He felt he should say something. What that something was, he didn’t know, but he knew the right word or phrase had to be lingering somewhere in the recesses of his mind. Before he located anything, Mike shrugged and said, “Fuck it.” He looked at Dempster. “From what I understand now, that’s pretty typical for around these parts. For all I know they never planned on opening a gallery in the first place. Or maybe they were just lunatics with some big ideas.” He shook his head. It was hard to believe that something like that would deter Mike from ever wanting anything to do with it again. The same guy who, in the fourth grade, was already making his own comic books, who won the Regional Art Competition when he was thirteen and then again four years later. Someone who had always had such a burning desire to create. Someone so deeply trapped by his own passions and so utterly lost without them. It couldn’t be as simple as one bad experience. That never would have stopped him. Dempster told him this. And Mike told him: “You’re right. It’s not just one experience. It’s many


years of them. Guess maybe my batteries are running low or something; but like I told you, everyone in this town has their head shoved up their ass. They’re all manipulative elitists who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I just eked out of that situation with George and Pooky. Angela got lucky—or maybe I’m the lucky one. Someone else slept with whoever it was that got her that show.” He pantomimed wiping his brow like a cartoon character and the sadness disappeared. A minute later they were laughing again. They spent the next half-hour chatting away, reliving old times. Then, with a yawn, Dempster said, “I should be getting out of here, it’s late.” “Yeah, all right.” Then to Angela, now in the bedroom, “Angie, Jack’s taking off.” “Goodbye, Jack,” she called out. “I’d come out and give you a hug but I’m indecent.” “No problem, good to see you. I’m sure we’ll see each other again before I leave.” And with that he made his way out, Mike following behind. “Thanks for coming over, man.” “Thank you for dinner. Hard to believe, but Angela’s actually become an even better cook.” “She took this cooking course at the Community College about a year ago. The instructor told her she was brilliant.” “She is. I’ll eat her cooking anytime.”


“Then maybe we can do it again before you take off.” “That would be great, count me in.” “All right.” A pause, then, “I’m sorry about this afternoon.” “What about this afternoon?” “Well, you were asking me about Carly and I was less than helpful.” A nauseating sort of buzz fluttered through him. “You didn’t know anything. Hell, you told me her name.” “Yeah, well, I’m sorry.” “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” “You should talk to her if you wanna talk to her. I mean, if you want, I’d even be willing to mention something to her in my own very cool, suave, halfassed way.” “No, don’t worry about it. I don’t have time for that kind of crap right now anyway. It was just a momentary crush, that’s all.” And no more, he thought—no more of that.

5

When he got back to the house, the guys were still out. He had debated going to the Eldorado for a drink himself, but was too tired and had already


had more alcohol than he should have. As much as he enjoyed drinking, he preferred being clear-headed, especially when leading up to a job. He went to his bedroom and closed the door, stripped down, and then went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. As he waited for the water to heat up, he looked at himself in the mirror. The reflection was strange to him, almost as though he was looking at a ghost. There seemed to be a part of him missing. He didn’t know which part, but something wasn’t there, and it was something near and dear to him. And now, all of a sudden, like a dormant virus finally awakening, the knowledge that some crucial aspect of himself had vanished made him sick. Or it had never been there at all and he just hadn’t realized it before. He climbed into the shower. The hot water glazed over him, relaxing his body, mitigating his mind. He kept his eyes closed, and allowed himself to wander around the niches, nooks and crannies of his head. Wheels turned in random directions and at various speeds, chopped film erratically spliced without thought, some of it backwards, or upside down. One moment he was on his grandmother’s living room floor with a coloring book, the next he was watching Donald and Lawrence Wycza in the cellar with shovels. He turned and walked away up the stairs and to a beat up Mazda truck at the Sam Wharram Natural Reserve, and stared at a beautiful, young fairy tale, which disintegrated, changed, and reintegrated into a gas station two hundred yards down the road, rippling under intense heat waves. He walked along the road


towards it, beside him a beautiful conversation and a lovely soul that he didn’t want to leave, even though he knew there was a good chance that every exertion might be used to get rid of it; then he slipped away into a car seat, where a hand jerked him off and sweet hot breath whiffed his face, as a recitation of calculated words clocked him like a hammer, telling him how some people say that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and he had no choice but to get out of the car and walk into a cell, where he would lie in bed at night trying to see light at the end of a long dark tunnel. Darkness can be harsh, a voice inside his head told him, and some days never come.

#

God, it was so many years ago now. Dempster hadn’t worked in over six months, and having overestimated his finances, was running low on funds. So when Frank Bourland called and told him about the job, he didn’t see what choice he had. Frank Bourland was a strong man with attractive, chiseled features. He was a smart man too, and had been doing this kind of work since he was sixteen. He and Dempster had known each other on and off for some time, and had pulled a job together two years earlier. Knocked over an independent video rental store in Muskegon that also held cash and handled betting for a group of


independent bigwigs out in Grand Rapids, who liked to dabble more than a little in the races at the Great Lakes Downs. Without much fuss and only a couple of threats, they had managed to walk away with a little over $30,000. The new job seemed simple enough. Down in Canton, security guards transported money in an armored truck from the Swig Time nightclub on Munson Street to the Wells Fargo bank on Frazer Avenue. While an armored car job is typically best handled using at least three, if not four or five men, this particular job seemed low key enough to be properly executed with only two. And plus, the more on the job, the more you gotta split the take. Swig Time was the largest nightclub in the area, a swanky dance bar with a 580-person occupancy, a 3,500 square-foot dance floor, a separate shot bar, a martini bar, five service stations and a full game room. Frank had done his research. Annual revenue for the place was somewhere around $1,100,000, while the yearly cash flow was around $640,000. Weekends were the best time, of course, taking in just about $12,000 on average. The thing was, on Memorial Day weekend Swig Time had a three-day festival party accompanied by additional holiday drink specials, which brought their numbers up considerably, almost doubling an average weekend. Also, because of the holiday, the banks were closed that Monday, and nothing could be transported until Tuesday, which added an extra day’s worth of cash to the pot, bringing the grand total to somewhere around $27,000. Bourland had also learned that Swig Time was the armored truck’s


last stop on a four-stop route, though he had not been able to figure out what the other three stops were, not that it mattered. There was going to be additional cash already waiting in the truck from the earlier collections. On Monday Dempster rented a 14-foot U-Haul truck under the name Benjamin Grant. He drove it to the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Tuscarawas Street and parked it amidst similar trucks and RVs, leaving roughly eight feet between the rear of the truck and the cinderblock wall that separated the parking lot from the street. He then went in and browsed around the store. He came out fifteen minutes later with a tube of airplane model glue and a small blanket, and climbed into the passenger seat of a blue 2001 Chrysler Cirrus with heavily tinted windows and Bourland behind the wheel. At four o’clock the next morning the same Chrysler Cirrus as well as a beat up Chevy van parked at the far end of the Swig Time parking lot, where a couple of other cars had been abandoned for the night due to the odd mixture of drunkenness and responsibility. Dempster and Bourland, wearing loosefitted black suits and ties, got out of their respective automobiles and walked away to have an early morning breakfast somewhere, each leaving a loaded 9millimeter handgun underneath the front seat. Dancing didn’t start at Swig Time until six but the bar opened at noon, which meant the employees were probably going to show up around eleven. They returned to their vehicles at a quarter of ten. Each of them had put three coats of model glue on his fingertips.


At one o’clock they watched the armored truck pull up drastically close to the club’s front entrance. A few early bird drinkers had shown up over the past hour but traffic was extremely minimal and the whole area, for the most part, was empty and quiet. Two guards entered the club while a third remained up front in the cab, at the wheel. After a moment the driver ran a hand through his hair, bent down out of sight, and came up again with a paperback. Dempster and Bourland put on dark sunglasses, fake mustaches and black fedoras, then got their weapons ready and started their engines. Five minutes later the guards exited the club, one carrying a heavylooking postal bin, the other a ring of keys. As the second guard unlocked and opened the rear of the truck, the Chevy van pulled up leisurely and stopped crossways behind it, making sure to keep just out of sight of the left rearview mirror and blocking the truck in against the front of the club. Dempster killed the engine, removed the key and got out as the Chrysler pulled up at an angle adjacent to both truck and van. Dempster threw the van’s key into the street. By making it casual, the guards didn’t immediately notice anything wrong, and therefore were slower to react. Before either could take action, each had suddenly found himself face to face with a small, dark, deadly gun barrel. “Don’t drop it,” Dempster told the guard with the postal bin. “Believe me, the last thing you wanna do is drop that. Right now that’s your life-support


system.” The guard’s hands rattled. His visage masqueraded as cool and calm, but just beneath the surface was stark terror. To the guard with the keys Dempster said, “Join my friend there.” The guard slowly crossed between Dempster and the guard with the postal bin, hands raised at half-mast. Bourland had him stop three feet away from him and turn around. He relieved the guard of his Beretta, then told him, “Go up to the passenger side of the truck and knock on the window. Let him see you, and keep cool.” “Jesus Christ,” the guard said, then stepped towards the cab of the truck, Bourland crouched down behind him, gun aimed at the small of his back. He reached the window, then hesitated. “Do it,” Bourland told him. The guard swallowed, closed his eyes, then rapped his knuckles on the window. The split second the door opened from the inside, Bourland clipped the standing guard with the butt of his own gun and rushed the driver. Meantime Dempster had removed the other guard’s Beretta from its holster. “Now set it down really slow,” he said, and the guard bent down to do as instructed. The second the postal bin touched the asphalt, Dempster struck him in the back of the head with his Beretta, then quickly dragged him into the back of the truck. At the same time, Bourland returned with the other guard,


and they tossed him into the back as well. “How was the driver?” “Piece of cake. Still looks like he’s reading.” Bourland loaded the postal bin into the back seat of the Cirrus, while Dempster quickly removed five moneybags and three metal boxes from the back of the truck. They didn’t take everything; they didn’t have time. The van was helping to block sight of what they were doing, but at any second someone could pull in or stumble around the corner or glance out the wrong window. For all they knew someone had already called the cops. Everything loaded up, they covered the goods with the blanket, tossed the Berettas, climbed into the Cirrus and drove away, heading towards Tuscarawas Street. Wal-Mart was busier than Swig Time had been. Consumer-ridden zombies walked and drove all about like slowly dying fish drifting through a crowded aquarium. It took about two minutes to get over to the U-Haul. Bourland pulled the Cirrus into the eight-foot gap between the truck and the cinderblock wall, and the two of them hopped out. Calm and casual, Dempster unlocked the back of the U-Haul, checked for onlookers, saw none, and the two of them transferred their take from the Cirrus to the storage truck. With this accomplished, they both jumped into the back of the truck and removed their mustaches and clothing, under which they wore shorts and loud tourist-style shirts. Two pairs of sneakers were waiting for them. They traded


them for their oxfords. They got out, closed up the back of the truck and headed for the cab, leaving the Cirrus where they’d parked it. The mistake was made when Dempster, intent on getting the hell out of Canton, didn’t consider that he was still holding his pistol when he got out of the rear of the truck. Bourland hadn’t noticed, but it was the first serious blunder he’d ever made. Walking to the cab he stuck the gun into the front of his shorts but it was already too late. He didn’t know if she’d seen anything else they’d been doing or not, but the woman with the infant and the full shopping cart had definitely seen the gun, had seen where it went, and the look in her eyes was as though she were staring at the devil himself. He climbed into the passenger’s seat of the cab, and tried to forget about it, even though he knew he couldn’t. Never in his life had he goofed like that. What in the world had caused him to do it now? It took them nearly four minutes to get out of the parking lot. Making their way toward Poplar Avenue, Dempster switched on the radio for any immediate late-breaking news about them. It had now been over half an hour since they’d left Swig Time, but so far there was nothing. Bourland merged onto Interstate 77, heading north towards Cleveland, while Dempster continued changing channels on the radio. After a couple minutes everything slowed down. Cars were backed up. With an aggravated sigh, Bourland inched the truck along, keeping with the


glacial flow of traffic. Five minutes went by, Dempster kept playing with the radio, then Bourland said, “Well I’ll be a son of a bitch.” Dempster looked up and saw the roadblock ahead. State troopers were stopping every car on the road. As they moved closer, Dempster saw the troopers making brief inspections of every car. He quickly went over in his mind what he was to say in the event that something like this happened. Then he heard Bourland say, “Oh you can’t be fucking serious.” There were police lights behind them, whirling flashes of red and blue. Over the squad car’s loudspeaker, the officer said, “Pull around and up ahead, please.” Dempster and Bourland exchanged a glance. In the rearview mirrors they saw other squad cars on their way, maneuvering and zigzagging through the stalled traffic. “Pull around and up to the roadblock, please.” Hesitantly, Bourland complied. He eased left out of the lane and onto the shoulder, and drove the truck slowly up towards the roadblock, those red and blue lights tailing them all the way. Before anyone had even approached them, they heard talk amongst the troopers about a U-Haul. It was then that Dempster realized their other mistake: they should have packed the truck with boxes and furniture and clothing, and hidden the goods deep within it all.


Such a simple job, they had overlooked the obvious, or overestimated themselves.

#

He turned off the shower, climbed out, and as he toweled himself, he heard the front door open, then the inane noise of drunken laughter. He threw his clothes back on, combed his hair, and left his room. Evan, Clark and Jimmy were in the living room. They were dressed so nice Dempster probably wouldn’t have recognized them if they hadn’t been in the house. They looked exactly as Evan had said they would, like high-class businessmen. “You should have been there,” Clark said as he lit a cigarette. “Evan bought a drink for this blond who was sitting by herself at the next table. When all she did was say thanks and turn away, he got up and joined her, which turned out to be much to her chagrin.” “I just thought she was shy,” Evan said. “So they’re talking for a few minutes—actually, Evan is doing all the talking. And finally this guy comes up, must’ve been a boxer or a professional wrestler or something. He asks Evan why he’s sitting with his girl. And Evan says, very casually, ‘I just need something to masturbate and cry about when I get home tonight.’ And the guy loved it so much he bought our whole table a


round.” “I think I could’ve had her if I’d really wanted.” “Could’ve had a broken neck,” Clark said. “Guy was huge. A fucking monster truck with arms.” “I could’ve taken him.” “Could’ve taken a beating from him.” Evan laughed. It might have been the first time Dempster had seen him laugh, and it was a pleasant sight. An obscure, out of character sight, but a pleasant one nonetheless. “You guys learn anything else about the hotel?” “Not really,” Evan said. “It looks pretty much as Gardner said. There weren’t even very many people there.” “Was Gardner there?” “No.” Dempster sat down on the couch. “Lemme ask you guys something. What’d you think of Gardner?” “What do you mean, what do we think?” “I mean, do you trust him?” “As much as I trust myself,” Evan said. Dempster looked at him and was surprised to find that both Evan’s and his own countenance were almost at ease. “And how much do you trust yourself?” he asked.


“I’m still not sure.” “Look,” Clark said, searching for an ashtray, “I wouldn’t blame anyone for having concerns about Gardner. Let’s face it, the guy’s a tool. But he’s the only one who really knows anything about that hotel. Seems that there’s a lot to know, too.” He found an empty soda can. “The layout he gave us and what he told us about the place all matches up with what we saw tonight. Also, the little bedtime story you told the other night is gonna keep him in his place.” He ashed into the can. “I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s a helpful hand. He ever thought about crossing us, I’m willing to bet my share that he’s tucked any ideas of that away.” Dempster looked at each of them in turn. When his gaze landed on Jimmy he asked, “What about you? What do you think?” Jimmy, surprised at being called upon, as though he hadn’t done his homework, said, “Well, I agree. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.” Dempster studied him for a moment. Once satisfied, he said, “All right. I’m gonna check it out tomorrow.” He stood up. “I’m gonna go to sleep.” “Me too,” Evan said. “I’m bushed.” “Too bushed to masturbate and cry?” Dempster asked. “Oh yeah. I guess I’ll do that first.”


Chapter Nine

It was a hot day, and when Dempster stepped into the Eldorado, he was relieved to find the place air-conditioned. Taking a tip from the guys, he’d put on the suit Freddy had supplied him with, a casual, lightweight, singlebreasted blazer with matching trousers, though he found that it hadn’t been necessary. There didn’t appear to be a dress code. He breezed past the front desk, giving it only the quickest glance and seeing Gardner, who happened to have his back turned at that moment. Past the elevators and just before the lobby’s lounge, he made a right and faced the Nidah Spa, where through the giant glass doors he saw a middle-aged woman behind a desk, content with her paperwork. Another right and he was in a nook with bathrooms and two payphones. He stepped into the men’s room,


washed his hands, waited an additional half-minute, and then stepped out again, and slowly made his way down the concourse. He passed the lounge and the kitchen on his left, while on his right the pavilion was empty save for a coffee cart no one was currently manning. The Tierra-tiled floor in combination with the soft gilding light continued the illusion he’d experienced when he’d first examined the outside. As though the entire place, to one degree or other, was made of gold. A palace in which men like him were not meant to tread. All the while, he was aware of the camera at his back. Directly ahead was the Anasazi Ballroom. The doors were propped open. Inside a woman vacuumed while a man cleaned the windows. The hallway made an L that went right and then another that went left, leading past another set of restrooms, the De Vargas Room, the Zia Room, and ending with a double-door exit onto Johnson Street. Here there was another entrance into the Anasazi Room as well, only this door was closed. Aware that the third camera since he’d walked down the concourse was on him, Dempster stood there a moment, fished around in his pockets for imaginary cigarettes, then shrugged and walked back the way from which he’d come. Making a right into the lounge, he approached the bar and asked the bartender, “Where’s the closest place to buy a pack of cigarettes?” “Just go up San Francisco Street until you reach the Plaza,” the bartender said. “You’ll see the Five and Dime. That’s the closest place I can think of.”


“Thank you.” He walked through the lounge, this time taking in the rope carved glasstopped tables, the loud striped carpet full of zigzags and diamond patterns, the potted cacti strategically placed here and there, and the moderately tacky wood-carved coyote sculptures, predominantly placed in the lounge’s center. The lounge was a little dimmer than the rest of the place. Dempster didn’t know if it was because of the décor, or if the lights were turned down lower. Exiting the lounge, he stopped in the lobby at the brochure stand, grabbed a couple at random, and then watched the front desk. When Doug Gardner saw him his face paled and he went rigid, almost as if panic stricken. A guest approached and asked to use a computer. Gardner slapped on a smile and directed them up the stairway to the computer room. When he looked back, Dempster was gone. Going through the mental photos he’d taken of the hotel’s interior, Dempster made his way up San Francisco Street with newfound confidence. The place was pretty much as Gardner had described it, only more elaborate and with a certain class Dempster couldn’t relate to. He’d noted every camera that had been marked on the layout, had covered most—if not all—of the exits with the exception of the Old House restaurant, where he would have looked suspicious had he entered, if for no other reason than that it was closed. He thought about what it would be like to have that kind of money. What it would be like to actually stay somewhere like the Eldorado. To have


enough money—legitimate money that was on the books, with everything kosher and no strings other than taxes attached. Hell, what it would be like not having to worry about things, always having enough to eat, having a roof over your head without having to share it with inmates or drunkards or rats or spiders. To have a nice place, not a mansion or an estate, just a comfy little place to call home. If things worked out right, and he sensed they would, then he’d have a pretty good chunk of change coming to him. Not quite enough to retire, he didn’t think, but enough to get him going, to hopefully start over from scratch, abandon this line of work and figure out what the hell he wanted to do with the rest of his life. And what the hell did he want to do with the rest of his life? He couldn’t come up with a single answer. After two blocks he saw a late 80s model Nissan Sentra, parallel parked in front of Starbucks. What caught his attention was not the car, but rather the woman standing outside it, an unraveled coat hanger in her hands, trying with little success to get it through the top of the unopened driver’s side window. The moment he saw her, a tiny flutter started in his chest. He crossed the street and knocked on the hood. “You always seem to be having car trouble,” he said. When their eyes met, Sandra’s face lit up, and before Dempster knew what was happening, her arms were around him.


“I thought I’d never see you again!” Her voice was so filled with enthusiasm it almost frightened him. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Locking my keys in the car, what does it look like?” “You just shouldn’t be allowed around automobiles,” he said, and took the coat hanger from her. Eighteen seconds later he opened the door, reached in and removed the keys from the ignition, and handed them to her. “My uncle was right, you really can do anything. Merci beaucoup, vous le bel homme.” “De rien, la belle femme.” “Ooh-la-la.” She put her keys into the pocket of her jeans, winked at him, and said, “How can I ever repay such a gallant act?” “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t,” he told her. “I think it would take some of the thunder out of the whole chivalry thing.” She smiled. “Well in that case, would you like to get a non-repaying cup of coffee?” She gestured to the coffee shop behind her. “I promise to make you pay for your own.” A laugh escaped him—a bigger laugh than the joke warranted, and for a brief moment he felt like he was fifteen again. “All right,” he said. “You got a deal.” “But to be honest, you might not want to trust me,” she said. “I might have no choice but to break our deal when we get inside.”


He smiled. “I guess I’m willing to take that risk.”

#

“Where did you get that car?” “I bought it from this Native American welder up in Taos. It’s old and falling apart, but so far it’s taken me where I want to go.” She sipped her mocha. “It got me from there to here.” “And how was there? It didn’t last very long.” “It was a big dull dud,” she said. “A land full of emptiness. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. I’d been around the entire town twice within the first day, and found little that stimulated me in any conceivable way. It was beautiful, don’t get me wrong; but I guess I was hoping for a livelier environment, not that it’s Taos’ fault. As Dylan Thomas said, ‘Someone’s boring me. I think it’s me’. So I bought my little car the next day, spent a bit more time with my parents, and got here this morning.” “And you already managed to lock your keys in the car.” “I told you before that I wasn’t interested in being a genius. I never said I was bright.” She paused, started to reach for his hand then thought better of it. “I’ve also already run into you. What are the chances of that?” “You would think they’d be pretty damn poor, but maybe the odds were better than we thought.”


“Did you think about it? I mean, did you wonder if we’d ever run into each other again?” He studied her delicate face, those beautiful eyes, such beautiful eyes. He said, “‘It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.’” “George Bernard Shaw,” she told him. “I guess I’m fairly stupid,” he said, and nodded. “Maybe I’m crazy,” she said, “but I can’t help wondering if fate is somehow playing a role in all of this.” “I don’t think it’s any crazier than ships passing in the night and then finding each other three days later.” Her face brightened. “How are your aunt and uncle?” he asked before things went any further. “They’re fine, still in Taos with my parents.” Then she giggled. “My uncle just loved you. Wouldn’t stop talking about Jack Driscoll and how amazing he thought you were. Jack this and Jack that, praising you left and right until my aunt finally asked him if he was hoping to become Mrs. Jack Driscoll.” Dempster laughed. “I thought they were pretty terrific too.” “My parents were a little hurt that I’d just arrived and had already decided to move on. Told me they hadn’t seen me in ages, and could I just settle down, even for a month. I love them, but I’m a grown-up now. There’s so much I wanna do, and time doesn’t slow down.” “How old are you, Sandra?”


It was the first time he’d seen her face take on caution. “Twenty-four,” she said. “You still got plenty of time,” he told her. “I know. I know that I’m young. But even when I was very small, I was somehow acutely aware of how quick time passes. I was always one of those kids that tried to do everything at once because I didn’t want a single thing to pass me by.” “It can’t be helped,” he told her. “Things passing you by, I mean.” “I know, but I wanted to experience everything. I wanted to live life the way I think it’s meant to be lived. I still want that.” “And how is life supposed to be lived?” She shrugged. “However you want it to be, I guess.” She sipped her drink, set it down, and stared at the table. “When I was seven, I was walking along Eighth Street with my mother. Eighth Street is a business district in Woodward, Oklahoma. We had been shopping and it was just going on evening when a car turned the corner and tore up the street, zigging and zagging, looking like it was about to lose control. Which it did. It hopped up onto the sidewalk and missed us by about two feet. We watched it crash into a lamppost and some newspaper boxes behind us. It also killed two women, who were buying a newspaper. The person behind the wheel was a twenty-oneyear-old kid who had stolen a car and was driving intoxicated. His bloodalcohol content was almost three times the legal limit. He wound up being


charged with two counts of first-degree manslaughter.” Dempster drank some coffee. “Pretty scary.” “That’s when it really clicked for me, I think. I realized that, at some point or other, life is going to kill you. You never know when and you never know how.” She sighed. “I think that’s when I truly became aware of how fast time passes, and I figured I better take as much of it in as I could. Really do my best to enjoy however much time I have remaining.” “A little morbid,” Dempster told her, “but nice.” She looked away and then back. “What about you? How are things going? How’s work treating you?” “Much like Taos treated you. Only instead of being bored out of my mind, I find myself trying to juggle about twenty different things at any given moment. For want of a better trite phrase, I feel like a chicken with its head cut off.” “Are you juggling right now?” “In my mind,” he said, “but no, I don’t have much going on today, other than stopping by and visiting a friend, which I should probably do pretty soon.” He looked into her eyes and then grabbed his coffee. “What about you?” “Just wandering around,” she said, “wondering where I’ll be and what the hell I’m doing. You know, just trying to enjoy it and take things in.” “So it sounds like your day is fairly open.” “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”


They looked at each other. Something inside him fluttered again. He wanted to reach over and take her hand but didn’t. Instead he slid his coffee away, grabbed a napkin, removed a pen from his pocket and wrote down his cell number. “Call me in a couple hours,” he told her. She took the napkin. “Don’t think I won’t.” “And don’t you think I think you won’t,” he said. “I don’t just give that number out to anyone. You’re a special case.” “Do you mean special in like, you like me, or special as in you think I’m a retard?” “I’ll let you know when you call me.” She laughed. It was a very girlish laugh and it made him not want to leave. He thought about staying, sitting and talking with her all day, drinking cup after cup of coffee until his entire body rattled. Going for a walk, possibly, maybe up Canyon Road to check out the galleries, letting their hands join again, their fingers intertwine. Stopping by the river, drawing her close, maybe even kissing her. He rose from his seat. “Call me,” he said, and left, buzzing, feeling as though he’d known her for ages, but still wanting to know more. He barely knew her, but felt she truly was something special—something that, if the cards dealt out right, maybe he could believe in.


She makes you feel like you’re better than you are. You’re not though. It’s an illusion. You’re no better than you were fifteen minutes ago, or yesterday, or six months ago, and you’re not going to magically change. And don’t forget how much you’ve already lied to her. Of course I can’t just magically change, he thought, not overnight. That’s stupid. But people do change. They change all the time, and if you’re willing to work at it, just about anything can happen. He got back to his car, and wondered how much he had just lied to himself.

2

Angela had just laid out slabs of clay for a new project when Dempster rang the doorbell. “I didn’t mean to disrupt you.” “No problem,” she told him. “I have to let these slabs dry out a little before I can really do anything with them anyway.” She offered him a seat. “Would you like something to drink?” “No thanks, I just wanted to talk for a few minutes.” Uncertain of the subject, Angela sat down on the couch quietly. From


the look of her, she was putting up defenses. “What’s on your mind?” “I wanted to talk about Mike,” he said. “About what he’s doing.” When it became obvious that she wasn’t following, he went on. “It’s none of my business, and I know I’m certainly not a prime example of a good human being and therefore pathetic to even wanna stick my nose in at all, but I’m wondering why Mike has stopped painting.” Taken aback, though clearly relieved from some mental anguish or other she had created for herself, Angela sighed and nodded her head. “Yeah, he hasn’t done much lately. I guess he really stopped a couple years ago, after he’d met this couple from New York.” “He told me that story. Sounded like a couple of fruitcakes.” “I think he’s just tired of trying, y’know? Sure, he’d always had his ups and his downs, but those two cretins picked him up so high and then just let him fall.” “The straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.” “Right, but it was more like an anvil, I think.” “He told me over lunch the other day that he would paint no matter what, but he’d lost interest in the career aspect. Said that the paintings he’d done were just going to stay in the closet. I assume that means he’s just gonna throw them away eventually.” Angela looked at him then looked away. “There aren’t any paintings in the closet,” she said. “I think he’s maybe picked up a brush three times in the


last two years. If he ever produced anything, I never saw it.” “Do you think that’s what it is? Do you think it’s as simple as that? Too many disappointments?” “I dunno, Jack. You know how he can be. On one side he’s got all the personality and more, then he has this other side that seems to be holding a million secrets and I’ll be goddamned if he’s ever gonna share a single one of them.” Dempster nodded. “I guess I’m concerned,” he said, “mostly because, even during his downs, he’d always had an optimistic outlook. Granted, almost a decade has passed since I’ve last seen him, but there’s an angry bitterness to him now that I’ve never seen before. I know I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let him just work in that store and not even have any other goals.” “Okay,” Angela said, “so what do you suggest we do?” “I dunno. Maybe nothing other than tell him he’s an asshole. All I know is his one goal in life has always been to be an artist, and we can’t just let him give up and throw it all away for no damn good reason.” There was quiet for a moment. Then: “Jack?” “Yeah?” “Forgive me for my past judgments of you.” “Nothing to forgive, they’re understandable”


“You’re the best friend Mike could have.” “That goes the same on this end.”


Chapter Ten

Sandra didn’t call. It was six o’clock and he’d been in his room for the past two hours with a paperback he’d read nearly all the way through but hadn’t absorbed more than a couple sentences of. If one were to ask him what the book was about, he probably couldn’t have explained it, even if he looked at the cover again and reread the back. He felt tired and groggy. It was hot and the place was stuffy and dry, and every once in a while he closed his eyes in hopes of sleeping through the worst of it. Each time he began drifting off, an image or thought popped into his head and jolted him back to the hot, stuffy dryness, and the fact that she hadn’t called him.


Maybe she saw through you. Maybe you let something slip that you didn’t realize, and she figured out who you really are. Or maybe she just came to the conclusion that you’re a fucking loser who’s too goddamn old for her anyway, and she discovered that she’d be doing nothing with you other than wasting her time. He opened the book, read a sentence, didn’t pay attention, and closed it up again. The girl has a life, you know. Her world does not revolve around you. Maybe she got busy, wrapped up with something or other—or maybe she lost your number or couldn’t read your sloppy handwriting. The fact is she’s thrilled to be out and about, to see a new part of the world, and there’s nothing to indicate that she doesn’t like you. So just let it go; she’ll call. And if she doesn’t, then oh well. It was true and he knew it. He also knew that he shouldn’t be giving a damn any which way, given his current situation, with everything that was going on. It was messing with his head, and he couldn’t allow that. He didn’t allow that. He never allowed that. “Hell with it,” he said, tossing the book aside. He stretched out on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The heat began getting the better of him, and slowly his eyelids grew heavier and heavier, until they finally closed.


#

It was dark when he woke up to the sound of his cell phone ringing. He fumbled for the bedside lamp, switched it on, hopped off the bed and snatched the phone from its charger. “What’s going on, man?” It was Clark. Dempster looked at the 9:05 glowing on the clock. Had he really been asleep for three hours? Shit. “I was sleeping,” he said, and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry, I’ll let you go.” “I’m up now. What do you want?” Clark was quiet for a couple seconds. Within the pause Dempster heard background commotion, people laughing, glasses clinking. “Jimmy and Evan and I—we’re just hanging out, having a couple drinks.” “Didn’t you do that last night?” He was still too tired to give his voice the strength he wanted. “Weren’t going to,” Clark told him. “Just stopped for a quick one and then figured to give you a call, see if you’d like to join us.” “No.” “Look,” Clark said, “none of us are gonna be best buds with you. We can all agree that’s a given. Just thought it might be a good idea, y’know? Boost morale or some such thing.” “You thought it would be a good idea.” He was waking up now.


“Well,” Clark said, “you think it’s a bad idea?” “I didn’t say that.” “So you wanna come hang out?” Dempster thought about it a minute. He didn’t really want to get to know these guys too well. He wasn’t very fond of them in the first place, and the closer he got to them… he didn’t want to invest more than necessary, didn’t want more than a professional relationship with them. While on the other hand, it might do all of them some good. Might ease some of the tension brewing between them, especially between him and Evan. It seemed it might be worth it, just for that alone. And hell, he had just slept three hours—he was going to be up for a while. “All right,” he said. “Where are you guys?”

2

The bar was very busy. It was also very loud. In the weak light swarms of college kids, most of them frat boys or rejects of a different nature, staggered and raced about with beers in their hands and crossed eyes in their sockets. There were six pool tables, all of them occupied, two big-screen TVs, one


showing a baseball game, the other a bad vintage Charlie Sheen movie. Pop music blared, though it wasn’t loud enough to be clear and merely added to the cacophonous atmosphere. To the left was a small stage. On it, musical equipment sat with no band at the ready to play. The place was foggy with cigarette smoke. It smelled like stale beer. Dempster sat, sipping a scotch and soda, listening to Clark and Jimmy, who had done most of the talking so far. It was clear that all three of them had already had more than they should have. Clark shifted in his chair. For the second time in three minutes he pointed over to a sandy haired woman wearing a light blue tank top. “I gotta meet her,” he said. “You said that a couple minutes ago,” Jimmy told him. “And all you’ve done since is had more beer and stared at her nervously.” “She’s something,” Clark said. “Exactly the kind of girl I go for.” “So are you gonna go say something to her,” Evan asked, “or are you gonna sit there all night wishing and hoping?” “Haven’t decided yet.” He smiled, took another swig of beer. “Man, she’s something.” “So go talk to her,” Jimmy said. “I mean, your dick ain’t gonna suck itself.” Evan laughed. “Yeah, you should go and tell her just that.” Clark drank some more beer. Then his eyes bulged. “You see that?” He


shifted again. “She just looked at me.” “She glanced casually in our general direction,” Jimmy said. “I don’t think that counts.” Dempster watched Clark sag sideways. He hoped and prayed that Gardner wasn’t going to be getting in touch with them tomorrow to tell them it was time. They would have to postpone it if he did, and who knew how long it might be before things would be right again. “This is the last time we’re doing anything like this,” he said. “No more partying until after the job.” The waitress came by to check on them. Dempster ordered four waters. Jimmy finished off his beer, tapped the glass a couple of times on the table, and said, “Can I ask you something?” Dempster shrugged. “Ask away.” “What was it like? I mean, inside?” He laughed, and leaned back in his chair. “Not as nice as it is out here,” he told him. “No, really, I’m curious.” “Isn’t that what killed the cat?” “I just wanna know. That is, if you don’t mind.” Dempster drained his scotch. “I guess I just don’t really know what to say. It was kind of rough at first. You know, for the most part people suck and all of that; but actually, the place was pretty posh, all things considered. I had


my own cell, a concrete bed, a sink, a small desk and a toilet all to myself. There was a day room where you could read or watch TV or play cards or board games with other inmates. There was a small though pathetic library, where I spent much of my time. I think I read everything they had in there at least once. There was an exercise yard with a basketball court and—blah blah blah, I don’t know what the hell to tell you. I’m much happier to be out.” He knew it wasn’t what Jimmy meant when he asked. He just didn’t feel much like going there at the moment. Still sagging, his left eye half-closed, Clark tapped Jimmy on the shoulder and said, “You don’t think she was looking at me?” “I promise you, she wasn’t,” Jimmy told him. “Dammit, that’s how it always is.” He straightened up a little, looked over at the girl again. “Anytime I think, even for a second, something might be starting to go right, turns out I misunderstood, I assumed something I shouldn’t have.” He picked up his beer, which was empty, and set it back down. “Just once I’d like to find that it was for real, y’know? To know that something was going right, even if it was just for a short while. Even for a couple of minutes.” The water arrived. Sandra entered Dempster’s mind. It had seemed, when he saw her earlier in the day, there was no doubt whatsoever that she was going to call. That it was all they would both be thinking about until the time came. “Don’t


think I won’t,” she’d told him, and her tone had been sincere. He knew that much. He wondered what might have happened had he not left the café when he did. What if he’d stayed, and they did sit around all day talking, drinking cup after cup of coffee? Maybe they would have gone for that walk. But he didn’t stay, and she hadn’t called. He’d left when he didn’t want to and she didn’t call him like she said she would. Something had to have come up. She wouldn’t have just blown him off. Not Sandra, not just like that. It was clear as day, with the connection they had, that she wasn’t going to just drop him. The fact remained however. She hadn’t called him. The fact remained that what he thought was his second chance was possibly gone forever, or maybe had never been a chance at all. Maybe he misunderstood, assumed something he shouldn’t have. Maybe he was angry and just trying to avoid it. He looked at Clark. “I think I know how you feel,” he said. “Never asked for much in life,” Clark said, slouching, fishing out a cigarette. “Never had any kind of huge demands.” He belched. “Just wanted to live my life, and wanted life to let me live it.” Dempster nodded. “It often seems like that’s too much to ask, doesn’t it? You know who Isaac Asimov is?” “He’s a science-fiction writer,” Jimmy said. “Was,” Dempster corrected, then drank down a third of his water. “Asimov said: ‘Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s


troublesome’.” “I’ve noticed you like doing that,” Evan said. “Flaunting the fact that you’ve read a lot of books.” Dempster looked at him. “And what have you done?” “I’ve had a lot of sex,” Evan told him. “I could’ve had a lot of sex,” Dempster said, “only I don’t much go for the type they had in prison, so I opted to read instead.” “I bet you were an honor student, weren’t you?” Dempster looked down at the table, then at his water, and wished it were another scotch. “I might have been,” he said, “had I ever bothered. As it is, I didn’t even finish high school.” He looked at them looking at him. Clark was sagging more. “How do you like that?” Evan said. “The legendary Jack Dempster doesn’t even have a high school diploma.” “How many people in this field do?” Dempster asked. “I know I do,” Evan said. “And what good has it done you?” Evan straightened warily and looked at all three of them, an uncertain smile wavering on his face. “What do you mean, what good has it done me?” “I mean,” Dempster said, “what good has it done you?” Five seconds went by. Then ten. Fifteen. Then before Evan could conjure up a coherent response, a voice from the next table said, “Hey, gimme


a cigarette.” The man was slightly pudgy, though well built, constructed like a large soft brick. His eyes were narrow. His lower lip was slack, displaying brown, crumbling teeth. He was in his late twenties or early thirties from the look of him. He sat with a friend not dissimilar in appearance, and his attention as well as his animosity was directed at Clark. Drunk as could be, Clark blew a stream of smoke into the air, said, “No,” and turned back to the table. A brief pause. Then: “What an asshole.” The guy rose from his chair. He was taller than expected. He approached the table, stumbling, then stood over Clark like a giant wobbly rock. “What the fuck did you say?” Clark gave him a reproachful look, and blew a cloud of smoke into his face. “I said no.” He reached for his empty beer then thought better of it, and returned his focus to the tall, menacing idiot. “Y’see, if you want a courtesy, a favor from a complete stranger, don’t demand it. Ask. Demanding anything from someone makes them think you’re a rude, spoiled idiot.” Dempster was impressed. It was a side of Clark he hadn’t seen before. A drunken side, but a new side nonetheless. “I’m gonna ask one more time,” the man said, gritting his teeth. “Gimme a cigarette.” Clark looked him in the eye, drew in on his cigarette, said, “You didn’t


ask,” and turned away. In the short moment before the man reached down and grabbed Clark by the shirt and yanked him to his feet, Dempster saw that Clark was looking over at the girl in the blue tank top. “You smug son of a bitch, I’m gonna smash your fucking head into the floor.” Dempster watched another attitude come over Clark. The cool was gone, as though it had never been. Evan couldn’t help laughing a little bit. Jimmy was entranced by the whole thing. Dempster stepped out of his chair. “All right,” he said. “You’re a big man, we can all see that. We’re very impressed. Now let’s each drop the issue and get on with our night. Someone else will give you a cigarette.” The man laughed. He reached out and lightly hooked his hand around Dempster’s neck. “Pussy,” he said, “you wanna stay out of this, I promise you.” Dempster allowed his head to be pulled in close to the man. He brought his lips to the man’s ear and whispered, “Bitch, you never wanna call a man a pussy until you can prove it.” The man let go of Clark and shoved Dempster. Then he brought up his fists. The crowd took notice and backed away. “To hell with your little fuck buddy. Let’s see how you bounce, faggot.” “You curious how I bounce, or how I bang?”


The man’s inebriated face raged. He advanced, swiped at Dempster, who pivoted and swung a left, making contact with the goon’s head. The man staggered, brought a hand up and rubbed behind his ear. He threw a wild glare at Dempster. “Don’t piss me off,” he said. “I don’t have time to be pulled aside and questioned for murder.” “You’d be afraid to raise your hand if you were thrown back into the first grade and asked your name.” The man moved in and swung again, first a left then a right. Dempster ducked both and struck a short shot into the man’s belly, then cracked a right into his ear. The man went down to one knee. Suddenly, there was no sound other than the bad pop music, which was worse than Dempster had thought. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the idiot’s friend, who still sat in his chair but had backed it a few feet away. The man rose from his knee quickly. He rushed in and swung a clumsy left, missing by about a foot and spinning himself halfway around. Dempster took advantage of the opening and threw a right. It cracked against the man’s cheekbone but he didn’t go down. Instead, from out of nowhere, his right came up and hit Dempster in the stomach. Without thinking of the pain flaring up inside him, Dempster shot a left uppercut and followed it with a right that crunched against the man’s nose, which spurted blood as he flew backwards and landed flat on his back, eyes wobbling in his sockets.


That was it. Dempster held his stomach with one hand, drew deep breaths, grabbed a gentleman’s untouched bourbon, drained it, and sat back down. He finished off his water and regarded Clark, Jimmy, and Evan. The crowd resumed its social activity. A couple people helped the bloody-faced idiot to his feet. The guy didn’t seem to know where he was. “I’m out of here,” Dempster said. He tossed some money onto the table and got up again. His stomach was already feeling better. “Looks like you’re probably out of here too.” He gestured to the bartender coming in their direction. “Dammit,” Clark said. “I want you out of here,” the bartender said. “All of you.” “What about Ace over there?” Evan asked, indicating the dazed goon. “He’ll be gone soon enough.” Everyone tossed money in for the bill. On top of the already generous tip, Dempster handed the man an additional twenty. “Sorry about that. I didn’t have any choice.” “I know,” the bartender said, “but please leave.” They made their way out of the bar. When they got outside, Dempster realized Clark wasn’t with them. “That girl in the tank top stopped him on our way out,” Jimmy said. “My guess is that he might be in there a while.” “Yeah, if he isn’t thrown out in the next thirty seconds.”


“Well, maybe they’ll go somewhere else.” Dempster looked at the bar, then out to the night sky. “Good for him,” he said. Then to Evan and Jimmy: “I’m heading home.” “All right, see ya. Nice fight, by the way.” “Thanks.” He walked slowly down the block and turned left on Don Gaspar Avenue, where he’d parked another two blocks away, next to another bar that appeared to be hustling and bustling. As he walked—realizing the alcohol was hitting him harder than he’d thought—he looked up through the streetlights to the cold light of the stars beyond. Little sparkling drops speckled throughout the darkness like so many distant lights at the end of one enormous tunnel. He arrived at his car, and as he reached for his keys, he saw a small blazing sphere shoot across the sky. It flared from yellow to orange to red, then faded to a twinkle, and died away to nothing. He remembered the song he’d loved as a kid, the one sung by Jiminy Cricket about wishing upon a star. He closed his eyes for a brief second and made a wish; and as he opened them he heard someone call his name.

3


Carly Whittaker was already approaching when he saw her. She had clearly just come from out of the bar. She wore black leather boots and a black skirt that went to her knees. Her white short-sleeved blouse was open, beneath it a tight red tank top that matched her hair. She had a quiet smirk on her face. “I see you go places other than Essentials.” She stopped two feet away from him. Dempster tried not to meet her eyes but found himself drawn into them. They sparkled like the stars. “I have my own life,” he told her, not knowing what way he meant it. She smiled. “Beats being dead.” “Not always.” “I think that’s why I’m drawn to you,” she said. “Your optimistic outlook on things.” His hands fidgeted with his keys. They served as a distraction, and he was able to bring his gaze down to them. He blinked, and when he did he got a lightning-quick image of Sandra. “Let’s go get a drink,” she said. “No.” “Why not?” “Jesus, what is it with you?” “I like you.” “Well, I don’t like you.”


“Yes, you do.” She stepped closer. “I know you do.” That was his problem. Had he wanted to, he could have just unlocked the car, climbed in and driven away. But he was still standing there, holding his keys in a hand that seemed to be inching back towards his pocket. He thought again about Sandra, the hours he sat waiting for a call that never came. “C’mon, one drink won’t kill you.” It was clear she’d already had a couple. “We’ll talk. We can get to know each other. Please, at least give me a chance. I’m actually a very good person.” Maybe it was the scotch and bourbon he’d had, but he looked her up and down, unable to deny liking what he saw. He looked up past the streetlights again to the stars, and sighed. “Fuck it,” he said. “All right.” He followed her back over to the bar she’d come out of. The place was smaller and darker than the previous bar, with scantily dressed women in their early twenties frolicking around, and hotshot young men in baseball caps lusting after every one of them. The music was considerably louder, as was the crowd. There were three TVs behind the bar, each showing something different. Carly led him over to one of two available tables. When they sat down, Dempster said to himself, You’re making a big mistake, but before he could consider the voice in his head, a waitress with a thick Minnesota accent


stopped at their table and said to Carly, “Back already, eh?” “Yeah. Ran into a friend.” She indicated Dempster, who flashed a brief smile and averted his eyes. “Hi, friend. What’cha drinking?” “Scotch and soda,” he told her. “Another Tom Collins,” Carly said, then turned to Dempster. “So what’ve you been doing since you forced me to abandon you on that hilltop?” Dempster looked into her mesmerizing eyes. “Nothing worth mentioning,” he said. “Oh really?” “Yeah, really.” “I bet it’s more interesting than you’re making it sound.” Dempster shrugged. “Why are you so hesitant to talk to me?” “Why are you so anxious to talk to me?” “Because I like you.” “You don’t know me,” he told her. “You’re interesting,” she said. “From where I sit, you’re an enigma wrapped in a puzzle wrapped in a mystery.” She reached for her drink, realized it hadn’t arrived yet, and laced her fingers together. “There’s something about you that’s different.” He immediately cursed himself when he said, “There’s something


different about you, too.” Carly’s eyes narrowed a bit. Her lips made a tiny side-of-the-mouth smile. “Good different?” If he hadn’t wished upon that falling star, would he be here right now, or would he be on his way home feeling sorry for himself? This certainly wasn’t what he’d wished for. The waitress arrived just in time with their drinks, saving him. “So I’m bummed,” she said, setting the drinks on the table. “The Dodgers beat the Twins.” “That’s too bad,” Dempster told her, not giving a damn. “I assume the Twins are your team?” “You got it,” she said. “Choi had struck out twice, but then Radke hung a curve ball and Choi knocked it over the right-field wall. Game went to shit from there.” “Sorry to hear it,” Dempster said, and made it clear through facial expression and mannerism that she could leave now, which she did, taking the hint. Dempster picked up his scotch and drew a long, slow sip. When he set it down, he was shocked to find a third of it gone. He glanced over at Carly, who was in the midst of sipping her own drink, eyes fixated on him. She set it down in an odd, dainty way, and then ran her fingers through her fiery hair. “I’m sorry that I actually ditched you the other day.”


“I wanted you to,” he said. Then a little too honestly he told her, “I was hoping I’d never see you again.” “Am I really that bad of a person?” “I dunno, maybe.” “Why, because I like you? Because I like you and you can’t accept that, and so I scare you?” She moved in and slid her hand into his. He thought about pulling his hand away but didn’t. She brought her lips close to his ear and whispered, “I scare you because you want me. You’re scared of what might happen if you actually get what you want.” Goddammit, his head was spinning. With his free hand he grabbed his scotch and drank down the rest of it, then looked around for the waitress to order another. He hated admitting it, especially after the other day—but yes, he wanted her. Wanted her more than he could comprehend. He wished to hell and back that he didn’t, but when he looked at her, he just couldn’t stand it. The waitress returned. “You made short work of that.” “I’ll have another,” he told her, and watched her leave. Fuck it. He squeezed her hand, moved in and kissed her. She smiled, took another big gulp from her Tom Collins, looked him up and down and said, “You wanna see where I live?” He gazed into her magnetic eyes.


4

That night, lying in bed next to her, he stared at the ceiling. So there it is, he said to himself, you stupid asshole. After a long personal berating, his eyes eventually drifted shut. Had he been more conscious he would have been surprised at where his mind took him. But instead he just relived it as though it were happening now. The Natural Reserve off Lake Avenue. Shelley, in the back of the truck, looking at the two of them with a glimmer in her eye. “I’m not sure I can do this,” Mike’s eyes told him. Like arriving at the first day of a new school, Jack stepped up to her. When he was close and ready, she reached out, wrapped her fingers around the base and tugged. Then all of a sudden he was in her. He became oblivious to everything else in the world. He didn’t ever want it to stop. Never. And then, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, he was done. He held her tight, didn’t want to let go. He kissed her on the lips and whispered ever so softly, “I love you.” His eyes snapped open. He glanced over at Carly’s silhouetted sleeping form. It had been good. It had been very good. It was something he had needed, and it was long


overdue, and it had rocked his world; but something had been wrong. Beyond everything that was already clearly wrong with the situation, something very important had also been missing. What it was exactly, he wasn’t sure, though he had some minor semblance of an idea. On the dark black ceiling above him, he watched a slide show: he and Sandra in El Reno, laughing, hands joining, the gas station coming into view and then the road turning into the Santa Fe River, where he stopped, drew her close, and finally kissed her. But she had never called. And so he slept fitfully. If he slept at all.


Chapter Eleven

When Dempster woke up, he refused to open his eyes. Though he hadn’t seen it, he knew there was sunlight piercing the window, and knew that if his eyes drank it in his head was gonna start pounding. It already ached as it was. He could hear her in the room with him, walking here and clanking, walking there and ruffling clothes. The sound of a bifold closet door opening was followed by a contemplative sigh. His eyes eased open and light spilled into them, causing brief pain though not as much as he’d expected. Blinking enough for his vision to accept reality, he saw Carly standing at the closet with her back to him, wearing pink cotton panties and nothing else. He watched her peruse her wardrobe, select a khaki sundress with poppy flower print on it, consider it, replace it, and


remove a soft turquoise cap sleeve pleated shirt. She glanced over her shoulder at him, saw he was awake, and smiled. “Good morning,” she said. Her voice was smooth and cool. She raised a seductive eyebrow, tossed the shirt onto the foot of the bed as she stepped around it and sat beside him. She leaned over him, kissed him once, and then hovered there, smiling. He ached to draw her to him, to blindly take her again as he did last night. He studied the smile, studied her eyes, and found himself pulled into them. He allowed them to swallow him, her smile to taste him, to chew him up. He sat up. She didn’t move, didn’t speak, just looked at him. He threw away the bedclothes, but before he could get up she was on top of him. He struggled, tried to push her away but she kept him down, pressing her soft skinned body against his. Her lips found his mouth. Her eyes went feral, and all of a sudden he found his heart pounding, heat blazing through him. He breathed hard, reached around her and held her tight, not ever wanting to let go as their bodies writhed, first off rhythm, then synchronized. She reached a hand down to remove her panties. Then suddenly he grabbed her wrist and wouldn’t let her. When she tried to pull it away he twisted it. Not hard, but enough to let her know he was serious.


She stopped. Her eyes went puzzled, then blank. With his other hand he slowly pushed her away and sat up. “No more,” he said. “No more of this.” “I don’t understand,” she said. Climbing off the bed, he slid into his pants, gathered his socks and shoes then looked about the room. “Where’s my shirt?” “How the fuck would I know?” He looked around again, saw it at the other end of the room. As he crossed over to it she got in his way and stopped him. “What’s your damage?” Before he could say anything, there came the ring of his cell phone. It was on the floor, on the other side of Carly. The two of them exchanged a taut glance. Then Carly swooped down and snatched it up, raced to the other end of the room and answered it. “Jack’s cell phone,” she said. “Well who the hell is this?” She raised an eyebrow, in no way seductive. “Oh, Sandra. Yeah, he told me about you,” she lied, rendering a scornful look. Dempster stepped forward. Carly listened for a few seconds then said, “Well, we were just getting ready to fuck when you called. How about I have him call you later? …What’s that?” She listened again, shrugged, “Oh well,” and hung up. She looked at Dempster. “That was Sandra,” she told him.


“You bitch.” She tapped the phone in her palm a couple times, then tossed it to him. Dempster quickly pressed the buttons that brought him to his recent incoming calls. The number she’d called from was unavailable. An unbearable quiet stepped into the room. The two of them stood there, staring at one another, rigid, mouths tight. “Who’s Sandra?” “None of your business.” “She acted like she was your girlfriend. Or maybe hoping to be.” “Shut up.” “Maybe you want a girlfriend, and it’s just not me that you want.” He pulled his shirt on, “I’m out of here,” and started for the door. She raced over and stepped in front of him, blocking his way again. “Out of the way.” “You’re not thinking clearly.” “I said out of the way.” She looked at him. As her blue eyes attempted to suck him in, to his surprise, they suddenly filled with tears. She turned away. “Sorry,” she said. Her tone was unbalanced, as though it might blip to dead silence, or erupt into hysterics. “I’ve been really depressed. Feeling like no one wants me.” She looked at him, then looked away again. “I guess I can thank you for reaffirming that.”


“You’re insane,” he told her. “I’m sorry if I seem crazy. That sometimes happens when you really like someone. Sometimes you do things you never thought you would do. Give me a few years and a few more heartbreaks, then I guess it will be easy for me not to care either.” “Carly, you gotta stop. I’m gonna leave now.” She looked at him. Her eyes seemed to go blank. “Fine,” she said. “Don’t be like this,” he told her. “C’mon, let’s grow up.” “Yeah, all right,” she said. “Okay, let’s grow up.” She placed her hands on her hips. “I’m hurt,” she said, then clacked her tongue. “But, hey, that’s life, right? It’s funny, you know? In some twisted way, I kind of feel like I’m just getting what I deserve… You know, for all the people in my life that I’ve hurt.” He tried to walk past her. She blocked his way again. She wouldn’t move. When she spoke, her voice was condescending. “And what are you gonna do once you’re gone?” “Breathe easier.” “You’re gonna go find Sandra,” she said. “Try and explain things to her.” “No,” he said, “I can’t.” “Yes you are. You’re gonna call her and call her, and once you find her, you’re gonna do anything you can to make things right. Tears will be in your eyes. You’ll beg and grovel. You’ll act like a lunatic. You’ll lie through your


teeth if only it will bring your Sandra back to you.” “Move,” he said. She leveled her gaze at him. “Is she better than me? Is she a better fuck than me?” He dropped is shoes and socks, seized her by the arms and flung her onto the bed. “You keep your goddamn mouth shut,” he told her, and picked up his socks and shoes. Not another word was spoken as he walked out the door.

2

He parked on San Francisco Street, ironically in the same spot he’d found Sandra with her keys locked in her car. The air was hot and dry, the sun bright. He stepped into the shade of the portal, through a crowd of people, and then into the air-conditioned Starbucks and looked around. He knew it was pathetic. There wasn’t a chance; but still he had tried. “Something I can get for you, sir?” “No thanks,” he said. “Just looking for someone.” He left the café and wandered up the street to the Plaza. His feet carried him around the entire thing twice as his eyes took hopeful snapshots of


everyone about. There were a lot of interesting looking people, some of them probably downright fascinating, but none of them were Sandra or even closely resembled her. Last night came to mind again. Then everything else since he’d left Ohio hit him like a hammer. A whirling kaleidoscope of issues that he couldn’t figure out. Everything had been happening so fast that he was dizzy, had been walking around in an aimless fog ever since he’d pulled to the side of the road in El Reno. He hadn’t been able to make heads or tails of anything since his release, and as a result he was making some bad decisions. Goddamn Carly. He could still see her when he closed his eyes, taking his one last shred of hope and squelching it in one simple act of spite. His phone rang. He stopped, and retrieved it quickly. It was Evan. “Missed you this morning.” “Yeah, whatever.” “Gardner says he’s coming by after work tomorrow, around six.” “What the hell for?” “Day after tomorrow,” he said. “It’s time.” “Already?” “What’d you mean, already? It’s what we’ve been waiting for. It’s why we’re here.” “All right, all right.” Dempster hung up on him. He walked around the Plaza one more time, taking mental photos, and then slowly made his way back


to his car. The sidewalk was caked with dirt, littered with cigarette butts and other small bits of trash. It was absolutely filthy, and he understood filth. He was a big part of the whole transcendental concept. One of the roots that kept it existing everywhere. The sidewalk had nothing on him. He drove off, making a right on Don Gaspar Avenue and then a left on West Alameda, which was flanked on the right by the Santa Fe River. A small river, almost measly, practically serving no purpose whatsoever. He tried to accept the fact that things never could have worked anyway. He could never be what he wanted to be.

3

When he got to De Vargas Mall he knew he was being paranoid but figured it was better to be safe than sorry. Rather than heading straight for Essentials, he veered left and entered the mall between the movie theater and the pizza place. Down a short ways on the left, just past the drugstore, was a line of payphones. He looked up Essentials in the phonebook, then pumped change into the box and dialed. After two rings a very loud voice said, “Thank you for calling Essentials at De Vargas Mall, this is Phil, how may I direct your call?”


“Hi, I was just wondering if Carly was working today.” “Hold on.” A click followed by silence. If she got on the line he didn’t know what he was going to do. Probably hang up. That’s what he hoped he would do. Another click and the background sound of Essentials returned, as well as the stentorian voice of Phil. “You still there?” “Yes.” “Carly won’t be in until four o’clock.” “Thank you.” He hung up, relieved, and cruised through the mall until he reached Essentials’ inside entrance. A large black woman stood at the register and feigned a smile, though it was clear that she’d rather be anywhere other than where she was. “Hello,” she said. “Howdy,” Dempster told her without slowing, and made a right into the book department, where he found Mike with a cart packed full of science fiction books. “Hey, Perky.” Mike looked up, “Hey, Jerky,” and immediately grabbed a book from the cart and tossed it to him. The Door of His Face/The Lamps of His Mouth/And Other Stories, by Roger Zelazny. “They’ve just re-released it.” “Shit,” Dempster said, flipping through the pages. “I haven’t read this in


years.” “I’ll get you one on my discount.” “Cool.” He studied it a moment, then placed the book back on the cart. “You up for some lunch?” “I might be,” Mike said, bobbing his head as he shelved a book. Then without looking at Dempster again he said, “You have a rough night?” It hadn’t occurred to him until just now that he was in the same clothes he’d worn the day before, hadn’t bathed or had a shave or combed his hair or anything. The fact that he was somewhat hungover probably didn’t help either. “I guess you could say that,” he said. “Do I really look that bad?” “Worse,” Mike told him. “Thanks.” Then, “Yeah, I suppose I had more fun than I should have.” “Good for you.” Dempster cringed and was glad Mike didn’t see it. He recapped in his mind everything from the fight last night up until his fight this morning. He was hoping, even if it was only for a short while, to forget about it. “So how about lunch?” Mike looked at the cart of books, then at the shelf and back to the books. “The covers they’re putting on a lot of these science fiction and fantasy novels— I never cared much for most of them, but they were passable. Now they all have some Fabio impersonator holding a sword or some such crap.” His eyes found Dempster’s. “I’m telling you, the world is going to shit.”


Dempster wanted to laugh but couldn’t. “Oh, don’t I know it.” “Yeah, to hell with this,” Mike said. “Let’s get some lunch.”

4

“I’m gonna be taking off in a couple days.” Mike chewed, looked at Dempster and nodded slowly. With his mouth full he said, “I sensed you were getting ready to leave. You’ve seemed a bit frustrated here.” “Have I?” “A little, yeah.” They were at the pizza place again. The food was pretty good, and neither of them had felt much like putting out the effort to think of something new. “I don’t think it’s the place,” Dempster said. “I mean, sure, let’s be honest, anything is better than where I was. But Santa Fe—it’s a lovely area. And being able to see you and Angela again has been terrific. I think it’s more the timing. Finally being free after so many years, there’s a lot I wanna do. It’s like I wanna be everywhere at once.” “You can never be everywhere at once,” Mike told him.


“No, but I think it’s time to move on. There are other places I wanna go, and there are still other people I need to see.” Mike studied him, searched his face as though he were trying to penetrate and read his very soul. “Is there something going on, Demp?” He’d been trying to hide it. He’d been pretty sure it had gone unnoticed. But gradually Mike was chiseling away, and gradually it must have started to show itself. Dempster shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “What do you mean?” “Just what I said. You’ve been here several days. I’ve only seen you a handful of times, and from what I know, you don’t have any other friends out here. You haven’t given me a phone number or even told me what hotel you’re staying at. You just kind of drop in when you feel like it, and you haven’t told me a single thing about what you’ve done since you got here. Your entire life here has been a total mystery.” He took a sip of his soda. “So what’s going on?” I wish I could tell you, his mind said. I wish I could tell you everything. I want to explain things as they are and not pull any punches. I want to tell you that I’m here to pull a job, and the only reason I haven’t been up front with you from the beginning is because I want to protect you and Angela. I don’t want to bring you guys into it. I don’t want you to know anything, not because I want to hide from one of the only real friends I’ve ever had, but the more you know, the more trouble can come to you. And I could never forgive myself if anything


happened to either of you. I could never forgive myself for that. He stared at Mike. He had always considered himself a decent liar, but as he looked into his friend’s eyes, the thought of out and out falsehood seemed virtually impossible. He could lie to a minor extent. He could avoid the truth until the cows came home, but he knew that no matter what the situation, he couldn’t look into his oldest friend’s eyes and feed him a load of shit. “Mike,” he said, “this is gonna sound crazy.” “Demp, I’ve known you since the first grade.” “I think I may have fallen in love. I made some mistakes and I lost her. I already know that sticking around here is gonna be too much for me.” “Fell in love? With who?” “You don’t know her.” “But you were just asking me about Carly not two days ago.” “I know. That was one of the mistakes I made. Maybe the biggest one.” “How? You never even talked to her.” He paused, searched Dempster’s face. “Did you?” “We talked. We hung out.” “When?” “The other day and then again last night.” “Jesus.” He looked away, then back. “Did you sleep with her?” “Look, I feel shitty enough about it, all right? It’s too complicated to


explain right now, so unless you know how to track down someone who has no phone and no address—” “I can’t believe you got together with Carly.” His voice was incredulous. “I mean, no offense, man, but I didn’t think you had a chance.” “I’m not proud of it, okay? Can you drop it?” Mike’s face turned to shame, while at the same time he was clearly impressed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What’s her name?” “Sandra.” Mike finished his pizza. “That’s a nice name.” “It is,” Dempster said. Or was, he thought. “You have no idea where she is?” “None.” “You don’t know where she lives?” “She doesn’t live anywhere, that’s the problem. She could be on her way up to Oregon right now for all I know.” Mike frowned. “So this is why I haven’t seen you much.” “Mostly.” “Mostly?” “Just leave it at that, would you?” Mike picked up his soda, contemplated it, then drank as though it was liquor. “So when do you think you’re taking off?” “Probably the day after tomorrow. Figured I’d give it another day or so,


just for the hell of it. Maybe hang on to a little more hope than I should.” “You wanna have dinner tonight, or maybe tomorrow?” Dempster looked at him and then looked away. “Yeah, I would like that.”

5

For the next hour or so Dempster walked along the downtown streets. When he came to the Eldorado he circled it once, gave it his full attention, being professional for a short while. The rest of the time he wandered aimlessly, both physically and mentally. He watched people meander about like so many rats in a large cage full of sky. Children shrieked while people forced strained laughter and spurious conversations through the loud, sardonic humming of passing cars. It was the breath of the street, the unheard groans and cries of self-pity, the weary sigh of acceptance that no one was what they seemed, wearing masks so phony they might as well have no movable features at all. A town of walking mannequins, always smiling, not knowing why but knowing that they should, afraid that if they let their facade drop for even a second, their entire world would come tumbling down. He crossed over the Santa Fe River, and eventually crossed back, thinking about his fantasy with Sandra, now and forever to be nothing more.


Down Paseo de Peralta, away from the river, past mediocre shops and boutiques, he drifted left onto Palace Avenue, and passed several galleries and high-end tourist shops, an office building or two, and Cathedral Park, where a man sat reading a book, a couple held hands, and another man played with his Australian shepherd. He began to realize what a bewildered state of mind he was in. A thick clouded fog, the haze of his mind transporting him through the mists of time, dwelling on the deplorable past, the present non-existent other than the sight of his walking feet carrying him forward, step by step, taking him somewhere—wherever they felt like—whether he wanted them to or not. He snapped to and shook away the past, and asked himself what the hell he was doing. He commanded his feet to stop, and that’s when he saw the twostory stucco building, white trimmed windows, double doors, a small group of homeless men gathered around a radio on the small spread of lawn. The library. The wonderful world of books, discount tickets to everywhere, bound pages capable of taking one beyond the limits of imagination. His savior, his sanity, the one thing, other than the knowledge of eventual freedom, that kept him going for five years. The one thing that let him know he was not alone. He allowed his feet to carry him up the walkway, agreed with his hand as it opened the door. His senses sparkled as he stepped in and found himself in a foyer with two large bulletin boards on the left and front walls. A generous magazine rack packed to the gills with periodicals free for the taking. On the


low windowsill sat a box filled with romance novels and Reader’s Digests. Someone had written FREE on it in black magic marker. Glancing at the bulletin board, amidst fliers for concerts and lectures, services and garage sales, used furniture and cars, his eyes were drawn to a bright yellow sheet pinned just below eye level. He read it three times, each time a little slower, then glanced over his shoulder, saw that no one was around, removed it from the board, folded it in half, and entered the lobby. There was a checkout desk on the left, an information desk on the right. Two people sat behind each, all of them as bored as if they were at an insurance seminar. People of all types wandered about. Everyone from soccer moms to has-been hippies to intellectuals and pseudo intellectuals who wore clothes that didn’t fit right. There was a sign written in calligraphy for Josh Willis, a painter who had his work displayed upstairs. The show was titled Summer Mornings in a Summer Sun. Dempster didn’t feel a need to check it out. Instead he just stood there a while, taking in the same sights over and over again. Between the two desks he saw a second entrance/exit, as well as several computer stations just to the right of it. To his immediate left was a short corridor that opened up into a large area with a series of shelves. A sign said FICTION. To the right was non-fiction, as well as copy machines, restrooms, and a water fountain. He walked between the desks and veered right. There were more computer stations, also several computer card catalogs and shelves of reference (FOR LIBRARY USE ONLY) books. Many desks and


chairs stood about like tiny islands, some with individuals stranded on them. Okay, so why are you here? You could putz around here all day but to what end? What good is it gonna do you? It was a good question, and he didn’t have an answer. But he had been drawn here for something, he knew. There was some reason why he’d come here. He entered the non-fiction area, which crossed by the lobby where he’d entered, and continued down into another long room. He stopped at the water fountain and had himself a drink, then wandered through the aisles looking at nothing in particular. Coming to the end of the room where a series of large windows looked out onto Washington Avenue—the street he’d entered from—he folded the yellow flier once again in half, and slid it into his back pocket. A red Nissan drove by, out on the street. He jolted, gave it his full attention. But unless Sandra had all of a sudden become a bald, heavy-set Hispanic man with a beard, it wasn’t her. Is that why I’m here? To have a joke played on me? He turned around and walked back to the lobby, deciding there wasn’t any reason for him to be here. Strange emotions tugged at him. For some unexplainable reason he felt jealous, though he had no idea of what. He entered the foyer, passed the magazine rack and the bulletin boards, then pushed his way out the door.


6

Freddy called half an hour later. “You guys ready?” “Ready as we’ll ever be.” “Everything still looks okay?” “As good as it’s ever gonna look.” “You all right?” “As all right as I’ll ever be.” “Nervous?” “No.” “Having self doubt?” “Always.” “Well, if there are any problems, call.” “I know,” Dempster said. Then, “I’ve been watching this town, Freddy. This is not the kind of place used to something like this. It’s gonna be a really big deal when it happens.” “And a really big haul,” Freddy told him. “Also, not being used to it, they won’t know as well how to deal with it. Get the stuff and bring it to Corrales. If you’re gonna be delayed, call. Any problems you have with the police down


there, that’s your problem, but Dempster—please try not to kill anybody. Like you said, it’s gonna be a big deal. We don’t wanna make it any bigger.” “We’re on the same page.” “You think you can keep those kids under control?” “I hope so. I don’t think they should be much of a problem, I’m more concerned about Gardner.” “I know you are.” Silence lumbered through the phone. “You’re worried about him too.” “I’m not,” Freddy said. “He’ll be just fine. You just keep everything together. As far as I’m concerned, you’re in command down there. You’re in charge. I’ve spent a hell of a lot of money and a lot of sweat setting this thing up. I want it to pay off.” “Like I said,” Dempster told him, “we’re on the same page.” “So we’ll see you in Corrales in a couple of days.” “Right.” “Good luck and be careful.” “Will do, you too.”


Chapter Twelve

Just before ten o’clock that night, Dempster entered the Eldorado. He took a seat at one of the glass-topped tables in the lounge and waited patiently until a tall woman with pretty green eyes and a black tie about her neck flung a coaster down in front of him. “Just a coke,” he told her, and didn’t bother to watch her leave. The lights were dimmer in here than in the rest of the hotel. Somehow at night the contrast was clearer. He paid for the coke right away, leaving a good tip, then stared at the reflection of the overhead chandelier in his tabletop. He wasn’t exactly sure why he had come here. It wasn’t as though he was casing the joint or anything like that. He practically wasn’t even aware of where he was. Maybe he just didn’t want to deal with the adolescent behavior back at


the house. Maybe he just felt like being out. Or maybe he was still refusing to let go of some inane hope clinging steadfast to his heart. The kind that seems impossible to get rid of, like stubborn mildew in a dingy shower. Scrub and scrub and scrub, but no matter how hard you try, it just won’t go away. All around him were voices and faces, blurred and smeared, having no meaning to him. He sipped his coke, shifted his focus from the reflection of the chandelier to that of his own face. It was odd to watch himself in such a strange lighting. He never looked how he imagined himself to. He always pictured himself more handsome, a bit more of a caricature, but always found himself plain. Then it was quiet at the table. He was looking at himself, and himself was looking back at him. Without sound, the reflection said, “So just what in the hell are you doing?” Without sound, Dempster said, “I’m having a coke.” “Everything you’ve got going on, everything you’ve created, and you’re walking around in circles.” “Sometimes that’s the only way to go.” “You’re groping after something, aren’t you? But you don’t know how to go about it.” “Oh really?” “Yes. You don’t know were to begin. You know you have a quest, but


you don’t know where or when it started, and you don’t have any idea what it is. And not knowing, unable to know where to search, you’re running around in circles.” “It’s not impossible to make progress that way, going in circles.” “But if you pursue it too much of the time, you’ll forget what it is to take the straight course.” “Did I sign up for some preachy sophomore philosophy class without knowing?” “You, your ego, you’re confused by the illusions of the world. Always have been. You’d never considered the Absolute before. You’d never considered anything before. Not until your lockup, when you had no choice but to look at things differently.” “Is that it?” “Problem is, while your perspective may have changed, it was also misdirected.” “Is that so?” “The world, with all of its mirages and misconceptions, became your Absolute, rather than the other way around. You blew a great opportunity while you were in stir.” “Then you can go live there. Enjoy your Absolute. Leave me alone.” “Years ago, you set up a fake identity for yourself. Overall an anonymous identity but an identity nonetheless. At that point, you realized that you had


the power to influence things. If you really wanted something, you could find a way to make it happen.” “That’s what everyone does.” “And it’s the biggest mistake, striving for things that bear no weight on anything and are, in the end, meaningless. You build desires, and as a result, rather than just being who and what you are, you create one, ten, hundreds of false egos, which in turn create more desires until there’s no sense of self left anywhere in the jam-packed auditorium of schizophrenic nobodies.” “Are you through, you dogmatic creep? I didn’t ask you to preach enigmatic bullshit at me. When you come down to it, I’m really not that different from anyone else on the planet. Whether I’m good or bad, right or wrong, I think I have a better sense of self than most people do. As Popeye would say: ‘I am what I am and that’s all that I am.’” “But what you are is a fake.” “No moreso than you.” “You’re running around in circles because you want things, but you’re so cluttered with wants and desires that you don’t exactly know what it is you want. It’s become a confusing jumbled mess and not a single thing is clear.” “Like everything else you’ve said, it happens to everyone. Now go away.” “You are going to be alone for the rest of your life if—” “I’ve grown quite used to it.” “But what you learned, or what you saw, in prison—it’s always going to


be there. It’s going to nag at you, keep you up at night, and all the while you’ll continue to run around in circles. You’ll always swim against the current, and wonder what the hell you’re doing wrong.” He lifted his drink and ran his hand over the reflection. The innocuous sounds of people laughing, of glasses clinking and of vapid conversation, seeped back into his ears. He rattled the ice cubes in his empty glass, then set it down over the dim reflection of his eyes. “Would you like some more coke?” Dempster looked up at the waitress. He hadn’t noticed until now that one of her pretty green eyes was lazy. “I’m fine, thanks.” Then before she could vanish, “Can I ask you something kind of personal and stupid?” “I guess.” “How long have you worked here?” “About two years.” “I don’t mean to bring you down or anything like that, but do you ever feel like you’re just running around in circles?” Her brow furrowed the slightest bit. She sighed. Then, “Yeah, pretty much every day.” “Thanks.” When she was gone he looked back at the table. “See?” He rose from his seat and strolled through the hotel. Outside the air was hot and dry. The sky was black as ink, with tiny little studs of light punched into it. He walked slowly up San Francisco Street, towards the Plaza. The


night was quiet, with hardly a person about. When he reached Don Gaspar Avenue, he stopped, thought about it, then made a right and headed down towards Water Street, a stone’s throw away from the two bars he’d been at last night. As he got closer to the street, he thought of Carly Whittaker and the fight they’d had that morning. What in the world was she was doing now? He knew from reading the sign on the front door of Essentials that the place closed at eleven. And here it was a quarter till. Chances were that if she went into work at four o’clock she was still there, getting ready to close. How long did it take for them to close after the doors were locked? Half and hour? An hour? He didn’t know. And why in the world should he care? He watched the street sign that announced Water Street grow bigger in his eyes. What he wouldn’t have given for a strong scotch about now. He stopped at the corner and looked right, down the opposite way of the one-way street. He had parked two blocks down and one block to his right. He was going around in a circle just to get to his car. It wouldn’t take him but a couple of minutes to get there. And Essentials was only eight-or-so blocks away at most. He could easily make it before they locked the doors. There would still be time to— What the hell are you thinking? I can’t believe the thoughts going through your mind. Maybe your reflection was right. You are going around in circles. What did you say the other day at dinner, when Mike brought up your


fiasco at the Romeo and Juliet high school play? One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Who originally said that? Einstein? Pretty sure that’s who. He also said, “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” Also good words, and so far it’s been— A thunderous crack echoed through his ears. At the same time lightning blazed through his skull, the world spun around him, something slugged him in the gut, and he found himself dropping to the sidewalk. Unable to breathe, he saw two men standing above him. He tried to blink away stars, and through them he saw it was the man from last night. The man who had demanded a cigarette from Clark. “Once again the faggot’s hanging out on the street corner looking for some man ass,” he said, and kicked Dempster in the ribs, setting off hellfire all the way to his chest and stomach. Hands hooked under his armpits. Suddenly he was rising like a fast, drunk elevator. When he was on his feet he was looking into the ugly mug of the man he’d beaten just last night, nose swollen, eyes focused. Other than that he looked exactly the same, only maybe a little more angry. Or happy, given the situation. “All right,” the man said, putting up his fists, “let’s go.” The hands that had picked him up now grabbed his arms and doubled them around, up against his back. He looked at the man, faintly superimposed


over a group of people standing on the street beyond. They were all watching him. They were also all people he knew. Mike and Angela. Freddy Skeele. Shelley was there. Charlie Powers was there. So were Evan and Jimmy and Clark. Carly was off to one side. Everyone was there, except for one. Where was…? His head twisted from the blow. Before he could consider it he was hit again. He fell back into the man holding him and was clapped in the jaw. Blood filled his mouth. He wasn’t aware of its taste, only that it was warm. He heard laughter behind him, grunting in front. A fist cracked against his left temple, and as he dropped, the one laughing lost hold of him. He shook his arms free but a kick to the gut kept him from making a blind swing. He doubled up and collapsed forward, clinching. “Not so tough now, are you?” He vaguely saw the man’s shape drop to one knee in front of him. Knuckles smashed his face once more. Then again. A chop, followed by a thundering punch that brought up the lights and then shut them down. The fists found him again. They smacked him around for a minute. Then he was hoisted up and shoved back against the wall of the nearest building. About to drop another time, something inside him refused to allow it. He wasn’t going to let himself fall again. His legs were hot wobbling rubber, but he wouldn’t let them buckle. A wicked jab sent his head back to smack against the wall; and in that


moment rage filled him. His mind cleared, then went red. Then the man suddenly let his guard down. Dempster threw a left against the man’s eye, then a right to the temple. Moving very fast, he hooked a right, a left, then hooked again into the man’s side. And as the man bent forward, Dempster, with all his strength, hooked another right to the jaw, and watched two teeth eject from the man’s mouth in a bloody spray. Stumbling backwards, the man collapsed into his friend’s arms. Dempster regarded the two of them, smiled a blood-red smile and beckoned the one as of yet unharmed. Even in the darkness he could see the man’s face had gone pale. Dempster watched him get his friend’s arm over his shoulder, and move him away as quickly as he could. He watched until the darkness had swallowed them, then allowed his legs to collapse beneath him. For a moment he stayed there. Then forcing himself to sit up, he leaned against the wall, drew his knees up and hugged them, and worked on his breathing until it was steady and calm. His mouth was now aware of the metallic taste swishing around inside it. He spit several times, then closed his eyes and shook his head to clear it. This revitalized the pain. Finally he dragged himself to his feet and the world darkened. He blinked several times, looked both ways, trying to remember where his car was. Down there, to the right, two blocks then another right. Keeping his shoulder


against the wall, he took baby steps, down there, where the streetlights faded to black. Half a block. Still no one around. Not even crickets singing tonight. Another step, another, one more and a rest, catch your breath, clear your head. Everything’s so damn dark, a blinding light of shadow. How does that work? That isn’t possible, is it? Another step, c’mon, another step… Spit… Blood tastes awful. Another step, down there. Head’s spinning, going in circles. Another one, now another. A full block now. Keep going. Mouth hurts, stomach hurts, head hurts. Dizzy. Shake your head. Neck hurts. Take a deep breath. Take another step. Suddenly he felt relaxed. The darkness became soothing and he drifted off, went far, far away from everything. He blacked out just before he hit the ground.

2

Jack sat out in front of the school on a bench, reading “A Rose for


Ecclesiastes,” waiting for his free period to end and for geometry to begin. Other than he and his book, the front of the school was empty. The air was quiet and peaceful, with the light chirping of birds and nothing more. Shelley hadn’t come to school this morning. For the past couple of weeks she had attached herself to either Jack or Mike whenever possible, wanting them both and unable to find a way to make it work. Now all of a sudden, she wasn’t here, and frankly, Jack was pleased. He remembered how he’d held her that night. Thought of the times he’d held her since. He wished he could still be there now, holding her, kissing her, loving her. The hard part was he knew he wasn’t alone in this. Mike was falling for her too. He was sure of that. And he was glad she wasn’t around today. The balance beam was precarious. The responsibilities were enormous, and he was glad for the break. Ever since that night he and Mike had exchanged few words. The few they did share were taut, acrimonious bits of insignificant inanity. The two of them standing there, not moving, not speaking, waiting helplessly for the right words or actions to come along. Nothing coming, nothing helping, nothing to break the self-inflicted tension, they would look at each other with a proud sort of shame and an undercurrent of hatred, and not knowing where to take it from there, they would part. Sitting here now, reading, a shadow dripped over onto pages 88 and 89. He looked up. Shelley was blocking the light. She wore a pair of white shorts and white tennis shoes with pink socks, and a green T-shirt that said


ELLEN BEITEL MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP SOFTBALL TOURNAMENT. She seemed frightened. Her eyes were watery and her nose was red. Her brow was furrowed slightly, and her soft lips trembled. Closing up his book, he studied her. “Where have you been today?” She tried to meet his eyes but couldn’t. Instead, her eyes wandered around, looking at nothing in particular, until she dropped them down and studied her shoes. “Can we talk?” Something sank inside him. He watched her sit down, moving almost in slow motion. Once seated, she reached for his hand, and he knew something was seriously wrong. His stomach turned to ice. Something was wrong and it involved him. He looked at her, the blood already running out of his head. A tear slid down her cheek. It stopped halfway down, quavered, then went to the end of her chin and let go. “I just want you to know,” she said, “that I’m pregnant.”

3

When he opened his eyes he saw blood on his hand. He raised up a bit and studied the red clotted glove through blurred, dizzy eyes. He said to


himself, What happened? Then he fell back to the sidewalk and coughed. It hurts doing that, he thought. It hurts to cough. Everything’s all fucked up inside. You took a pretty good beating. Nice work and good timing too, all things considered. Can you even sit up? He tried. He could. It was slow going but he got himself upright. Good. Now see that parking meter there? Use that and get yourself up to your feet. The top of the meter was as tall as a skyscraper. Taking hold of the metal post, he pulled, climbed up, putting one hand over the other. Once on his feet he shook his head, steadied himself. Much to his surprise, he felt better. Okay. Now let go of the meter and continue your journey. He did, though found that he was still shaky. He walked slowly, though a slight improvement over his previous baby steps. Instead of propping his shoulder against the buildings, he clasped his hands to his abdomen, and blinked repeatedly to keep his eyes from clouding over. You’re doing fine. You’re doing just fine. Slow and steady wins the race, big guy. You’re the tortoise. Just be the tortoise. You’re doing fine. He made it to the end of the block and looked right. He saw his car amidst dark shadows, down at the end. A step… Another… Then a half step and his legs went rubbery again. He dropped to one knee, but wouldn’t let himself go down any further.


Get up, he told himself, get up. That was when the lights hit him from behind. He heard the hum of an unsteady engine. When he turned to look, he saw nothing but two blinding bright eyes staring at him. They shot pain into his head, and when he shut his eyes to block it out, he grew dizzy and fell once more. Again he was distanced from everything. He kept his eyes closed and enjoyed the blackness. Enjoyed the spinning, nauseating sensation going round in his skull. Get up, he told himself. Get up and walk. A car door opened, closed. Keeping his eyes shut, he forced himself onto his elbows and began crawling away from the light. He crawled pitifully towards his car, not entirely certain he was going in the right direction, but knowing that he was headed away from the lights. He crawled through the grime, the cigarette butts and other small bits of trash. He listened to the sound of fast-moving footsteps. They sounded like a child in clogs, running down an empty hallway. They were closer now. Then a voice mixed into the clomping and it said, “Jack, oh my God!” The footsteps stopped right beside him, and a hand touched his shoulder. His eyes opened. His neck protested as he turned his head to see the source of the sound. When he saw her crouched above him, he opened his mouth but couldn’t get any words out. All that escaped was a groan.


“Jesus, Jack, what happened to you?” Her hands took hold of his shoulders, tried to steady him, then tried to pull him up. Do it, he said to himself. Get up to your feet. When he eventually lifted himself from the ground, defeating the fatigue pressing down on him, wheezing as he came up, she wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and together the two of them stumbled over to the humming lights. Sandra opened the passenger door and helped ease him inside. As she walked around the car to the other side, he found that he was mumbling incoherently. She climbed in, put on her seatbelt, and drove. “I’m taking you to the hospital,” she said. Finally, though it was weak, his first cohesive word crept from his throat. “No.” She looked at him. What started as astonishment evolved into a queer knowledge that something was going on. Rather than driving herself mad with judgment or perplexing rumination, she stared through the windshield and drove the car instead. “So what happened there?” “I got jumped,” he told her. It was draining to speak. His words came out in breathless little jumbles. “Two guys… beat the crap out of me.” “Why?” It was too much effort to shrug, though he wanted to. “I just happened to be there, I guess.” Then he was blinded with a fiery pain that slashed


through his head. He whimpered, clenched his fists, then eased back in his seat. She put on her blinker, made a left. The stereo was on, very soft. It was that song “Green Tambourine,” by the Lemon Pipers, though it was almost inaudible. He was impressed he’d picked up on it at all. “You have to go to the hospital,” she told him. “No I don’t,” he said; and when she looked at him, through his shuddering pain and extreme exhaustion, he managed a bloody-toothed grin. “You look awful,” she said. “Thank you.” “Tell me what happened.” “I thought I already did.” “No, tell me how it went down.” Though it took him longer than it should have, he told her about having a coke at the hotel, about going for a walk, and pausing at the corner in debate with himself. He told her about the two men, how they had jumped him. And how he’d managed to get in some good licks in the end. Watching her drive, he could tell she was in a dispute with herself as to whether she should believe him or not. He knew from looking at her that she was going to cave. He just had to be patient, had to be the tortoise. He grinned again, to himself. Then pain overtook him. “So why don’t you wanna go to the hospital?”


“A hospital is no place to be sick.” They drove in silence for a couple of minutes. The song had changed from “Green Tambourine” to “Isn’t It a Pity,” by George Harrison. Dempster always liked the song, though he didn’t want to turn it up. Everything was a pity right now; he didn’t need anyone singing it in his ears. After another minute, he said, “I thought you were gone. I mean, I thought that was really it.” More silence. “What are you doing? I mean, why are you still in Santa Fe?” She cut him a glance. Her expression was cold now. An elaborate sigh blew out from deep within her. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said. “I was just out for a night drive, taking in more of the city.” Another grin crept onto his face. “And you happened to find me. What are the chances of that?” She looked at him again. He could tell she wanted to smile but wouldn’t allow herself to. “It would seem,” she said, “in one metaphorical sense, anyway, your ship has sunk.” Which sense she meant, he wasn’t sure. He sagged in his seat, and thought about all the trouble over the past few days. Not even free for a week, and I’ve already created more problems than I can handle. But why should I cry about it? Everybody’s got troubles. Sandra here, she’s got troubles of her own; but you got to admit it’s strange—this is the third time we’ve walked into


each other’s lives in only a few days. Ships passing, converging, straying, converging. You know what it’s like when you look at her. It’s not the same kind of thing as when you look at Carly. Carly wanders in with her body and you’re hooked. Sandra wanders in with that and everything else to boot, and when you see her, something changes inside you. You feel stronger. You also feel weaker. You feel more like the man you know you can be. Like the man you want to be. Sandra pushed a tape into the cassette deck, most likely just for something to do. It was faint, but he recognized it as the Hollis Wake. He looked at her, staring through the windshield. His voice was weak when he said, “Sandra?” She looked at him, then back to the road. “I’m sorry,” he told her, and turned his attention out the window. Buildings passed by. He realized they were on Saint Francis Drive and didn’t really care. He didn’t care where he was, so long as it was with her. “I’m sorry about… I’m… I’m sorry that…” “Skip it.” The car suddenly accelerated. Her lips were pressed tight. She made a right onto Cerrillos Road and the car picked up more speed. Dempster didn’t know what to say. All words were lost. Once or twice he opened his mouth to speak but held it back. They didn’t talk again until she pulled into the parking lot of the Quality Inn ten minutes later.


She switched off the engine and then turned to him. “Come inside. I’ll help you get cleaned up.” “If I’m putting you out, you can take me back to where I was.” She didn’t answer. Instead she got out the car, walked around and opened his door, and helped him out. The pain, all of it, was fading, but it was still there, oppressing him, dragging him down. And of course she would be on the second floor. He had to hold onto her as they climbed the steps. Once he almost lost his balance, pulling Sandra down with him, but she managed to keep him on his feet, and they made it to her door. That’s pretty much what you’re doing, my man. Pulling her down. At first you were a wonder to her, a super hero, Captain America or someone. And now, well… now you’re nothing more than a fucking burden. Inside the room he sat down on the bed. Enough strength had returned that he was able to sit up now without any problem. He watched her walk into the bathroom, saw the light go on, and then heard the sound of running water. When she returned, she was holding a wet washcloth and two towels, as well as a glass of water, a bottle of peroxide, and a box of Band-Aids. “I don’t imagine those came complimentary with the room.” “I keep myself prepared for certain eventualities,” she said, and handed him the glass of water. She began cleaning the blood and dirt from his face. The washcloth felt nice and warm, and he closed his eyes. He listened to her breathing and to the sounds of the washcloth as it brushed against his skin.


They were pleasant sounds, mixing in with the warmth. It was like having a really sweet dream. “Well,” she said after a time, “whatever went down, they got you pretty good.” “I’ve been beaten much worse,” he told her. “I should be fine by tomorrow.” Without opening his eyes, he sensed a cloud of tension develop in the air. The washcloth came away from his face, and when he looked she was rising. “I’m gonna rinse this out.” When she came back, she kneeled down and took hold of his right hand. The sensation of their fingers touching sent a nervous tingle through him. When he looked at her, he saw her eyebrows were slightly lifted, as though she hadn’t anticipated something that had just happened. She continued though, cleaning the blood from his knuckles and fingers. When his right hand was done she took hold of his left, and as they watched the blood disappear together, she asked, “How many beatings have you taken in your life?” Without giving it much thought he told her, “More than I should have.” Flicking a glance up at him, she wiped his hand harder. Irritation or apprehension or just a deeper cleaning, he wasn’t sure. “Jack?” “Yeah?”


“I’m getting the feeling that everything I know about you isn’t right.” She set down the washcloth, added peroxide to one of the towels, took his right hand again and clasped the towel against it. It stung, but not as much as he’d thought it would. “I get the feeling that you’re not Jack Driscoll, art appraiser,” she said. “You’re more like James Bond, or something.” He looked her in the eye. It was the oddest moment he’d experienced in he didn’t know how long. It was like staring into the eyes of Carly and Mike both—a beautiful, stunning person and also a best friend, only with something additional thrown into it. Something really amazing. Sure, he could lie to a minor extent. He could avoid the truth until the cows came home. But no matter what, he couldn’t look her in the eye and feed her a load of shit. “I’m a fake.” She rolled her eyes. “That much I think I’ve figured out,” she said. “What kind of fake you are is another story.” He opened his mouth to say something but didn’t. He checked himself, searched his mind to see if he could find anything better to tell her, and realized he couldn’t tell her anything at all. Sandra did to his left hand what she’d done to his right. He liked the feeling of their palms kissing, and enjoyed the memories and thoughts that it brought up. After a moment he wrapped his fingers around the hand holding his. She stopped what she was doing, looked up at him. Her eyes were moist


but certain, and her hand gripped his with a tight affirmation he’d hoped for but didn’t expect to achieve. “‘She loved him with too clear a vision to fear his cloudiness.’” “Now that one I don’t know.” “E.M. Forster,” she told him. “Howard’s End.” “Never read it.” She rose from her knee and sat on the bed beside him. Then her head was on his shoulder. “Not that it’s really any of my business,” she said, “but when that girl answered your phone this morning…were you really about to…?” He placed his arm around her shoulder and clutched her tight. “No,” he said, avoiding the truth, but not lying. “Because it’s okay,” she said. “At least, I think it is. I mean, it’s not like we’d decided to become exclusive or anything.” Her head came away from his shoulder, her face went red. “I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry. We aren’t anything. Maybe we never should be anything. We’ve never even kissed, and for all I know this is something I’ve built up entirely in my head. Being a daydreamer, I have a tendency to do that sometimes.” Watching her, listening to her, he felt spellbound. Warmth came from her body like steam from a hot towel and flowed into him. She moved closer to him, or maybe it was he moving closer to her. He wasn’t sure, but he grew dizzy again. This time, however, it was because of the nearness, the heat rising between them. He kissed her gently on the lips. Then they kissed again.


When they pulled away, she placed her head back on his shoulder. “Who was that girl that answered your phone?” “A girl that wanted things from me I wouldn’t give her.” A pause, then, “Okay.” Another pause, then, “You don’t sound as though you believe me.” “‘The highest form of affection is based on full sincerity on both sides.’” “Thomas Hardy,” he said. She shrugged. “I had planned on leaving right away after I called this morning,” she told him. “But something—something wouldn’t let me. Some voice inside my head told me I couldn’t leave just yet. I had to stay a little longer. Honestly, I think I really stuck around out of some pathetic hope that maybe I’d…” “Same here,” he told her, not wanting her to finish that sentence. “It sounds crazy, Jack, so I don’t mean to scare you.” At that moment something happened inside him he’d never experienced before. All of his problems, all his troubles—suddenly none of it seemed very important. There’s nothing that can’t be dealt with, he thought as electricity surged through him, starting in his heart and spreading all the way out to the tips of his toes and fingers. “Sandra?” “Yeah?” “You ever read the Barchester Towers?”


“No, I haven’t.” “‘There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.’” She raised her head again, looked into his eyes, uncertainty wavering across her blushing face. “That doesn’t sound too optimistic,” she told him. “It’s not. But I think I’m as scary as you.” He drew her face to his. The heat between them rose. Their arms wrapped around one another. They kissed, and when their lips parted they held each other for a long, quiet time. He didn’t ever want to let her go. Never in his life had everything seemed so right, so perfect, so completely full. All the physical pain was suddenly gone; or much like when he’d been blacking out, it was so distanced that it didn’t matter. Other than where he was at that exact moment, nothing else mattered. “So do I get to know who you really are?” she asked. “Let’s just say, I’m not who you think I am—or thought I was.” A pause, then, “As long as the person I see inside you is real.” “I think that part’s real,” he said. “I hope it is, anyway.” He paused, then took his turn. “You didn’t call.” “I know. I’m sorry. You’ll hate me if I tell you why.” “Yes, that’s why we’re having this moment.” “I’d lost the napkin you’d written your number on. I spent over two hours looking for it. I even went back to Starbucks and they let me poke through the trash. Finally I found it under the front seat of my car, but by that


time it was too late to call.” He kissed her cheek and held her tighter. “Are you still leaving tomorrow?” “Not if you’re here when I wake up.” The heat between them rose again. A minute later they were lying down together, and a minute after that Sandra turned off the light.

4

He was conscious that his body ached before he opened his eyes. His muscles were stiff. His jaw ached. His stomach throbbed. It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected, though it was no pleasure ride. He stared up at the ceiling for a while. It wasn’t quite dawn, and the soft light cutting into the room had an almost majestic silver tint. The only sound was the muffled rush of the occasional car driving out on Cerrillos Road. He turned his head and looked at Sandra snuggled on her side, facing him, breathing gently. She looked so peaceful. He wanted to reach out and stroke her hair, but wouldn’t allow himself. He didn’t want to wake her. He didn’t want anything to spoil this moment. He wanted to enjoy this for exactly what it was.


This time I’m going to keep her, he said. Her eyes fluttered. Then they opened and she saw him. She lifted her head, and when she did he kissed her. She smiled a sleepy smile at him. “It’s early.” He kissed her again. Then he watched her head settle back into the pillow. Watched the smile slowly fade from her lips as she drifted off once more to Never Land. For a while he just looked at her and listened to the wisps of her soft breathing. The darkness, the confinement—I thought it had crushed everything out of me. Shelley had taken it away from me a long, long time ago. Had taken the one thing I thought I could believe in. That’s why I had placed a coffin lid over my heart. That’s why I am the person I am today. But what I am is a fake. I’ve been a fake for a long time. Maybe, in some way, you were right, Mister Reflection of Myself. Maybe I have been so cluttered with wants and desires that I just couldn’t figure out exactly what I wanted. And yet I thought I didn’t want anything. Or I thought I wanted something that I never really…I don’t know. He leaned over and kissed her forehead. She smiled a little but that was it. I hadn’t made a coffin of my heart. Or if I had, someone dug it up and opened it. And that someone is asleep beside me right now. He eased back down, placed his arm around her, and closed his eyes. It


didn’t matter to him if he slept or not. Then her voice came, faint and dreamy. “So are you a bank robber or a hit man or something?” He opened his eyes and saw that hers were still closed. “You’re in the ballpark,” he told her. Her lips curved. “Okay,” she said, then snuggled in close to him. “Just so long as you’re really Jack.” “Dempster,” he said. “Huh?” “I’m Jack Dempster. For Lack of a better way to put it, I commit illegal acts for money.” For a moment her face was expressionless, then her eyebrows bounced up briefly on her forehead and her lids closed down. “You probably don’t get benefits with that.” “In a way I do.” She kissed him then. “Are you kidding?” “No.” “Good,” she said. “Be honest with me. I don’t care what you do, as long as you’re honest.” “I’ll do my best,” he told her. “I don’t want to lie to you.” She nestled close. A small eternity passed before se spoke. Then, “Jack?”


“Yeah?” “Did you sleep with that girl?” “Yes.” “Did you sleep with her when I called?” “No.” She put her arm around him. “I’m glad,” she said. “I’m not. I never should have at all. I’m sorry.” “Don’t be.” “Can’t help it.” “Your issue.” A couple of minutes later they were both asleep.

Chapter Thirteen


Dempster stumbled into the bathroom around 10:30, rubbing his eyes and trying to work the stiffness out of his back. He closed the door, looked at himself in the mirror, and saw a tired, bruised, aging man. For the first time in quite a while, however, he didn’t feel old. He ran the faucet, rinsed his mouth out and washed his face, deciding he would wait to shower until he got back to the house. Are you going back to the house? You could toss the cell phone, leave the car downtown where it is, and join Sandra in getting the hell out of this place. He looked at himself again, and asked, “Is that what you wanna do?” Yes, but you have a commitment. You agreed to do this. And if it all works out, you can go away forever and take Sandra with you. You can start the new life you keep thinking about, only it will be better than you had imagined. In order to do that, though, you have to stick to your commitment. If you back out now, you won’t have any way to start that life. Neither of you has much money, and to build a new life you need cash. How much of what Freddy gave you do you have left? Not much. It’s impressive you’ve made it last as long as you have. Looking casually around the bathroom, he felt the stiffness in his neck and shoulders. Then he said to hell with it, and turned on the shower, making the water as hot as he could stand. When he came out fifteen minutes later, Sandra was sitting on the bed.


Beside her were his pants, and in her hands she held a yellow piece of paper. She appeared to be reading it over and over again, or maybe not reading it at all and just thinking about it. She turned to him. “It fell out of your pocket,” she said. He sat down beside her, and looked down at the flyer he’d taken from the library bulletin board yesterday.

Earn Your High School Diploma Now! Isn’t it about time you earned your High School Diploma? A significant step forward in life and in your career, a high school diploma not only will increase your earning potential, but doors will open to more opportunities and even more educational choices. Start creating the life you want. Call now! (505) 555-6172 He reached over, gently took it from her, and refolded it. Neither said a word for quite some time. Sandra got up and finished getting packed. Dempster slid on his pants and returned the paper to his back pocket. After he eased into his shirt Sandra hooked his arm. “You’re here for a job, aren’t you?” “Yes.” “Obviously not the job you told me about.” “Right.” “You must really love me.”


“Why?” “Why else would you risk blowing everything?” “If I felt there had been a risk, I wouldn’t have told you.” She gnawed on that for a moment. Then, “When does it happen?” “Soon.” “Anyone gonna get hurt?” “I hope not.” “When it’s done, what are you going to do?” “Skip town.” “How about you and me going away together?” “I’ve been thinking about that.” “Have you?” “Yes. I’ve been thinking about that a lot.” “Good.” “Where do we go?” “Anywhere. We’ll go anywhere, all over the country. All over the world.” “And what happens when we can no longer stand each other?” “Do you think that’s going to happen?” “Gotta be realistic,” he told her. “I think you might get tired of someone considerably older than you, who spends most of his time worshipping you in his own cryptic ways.” “No moreso than you might grow weary of a young over-privileged Lit


major who spouts out recondite information on subjects she knows nothing about, and who still thinks it’s chic to mentally work out with pseudointellectual exercises.” “I dunno,” Dempster said. “Maybe we’re both so weird that we deserve each other.” “You can get your high school diploma,” she said. “If you want, you can even go on to college. We can travel around the world. Or we can get a little cottage or a cabin in some rural area—somewhere in Maine, maybe, or I’ve heard Maryland is very beautiful—and we can just live our lives. If we have to, we can work as grocery baggers or gas station attendants or whatever will pay the bills. I could work in a greenhouse. We can spend our nights and weekends reading to one another, drinking wine and making love. I’ve always kind of wanted to try my hand at writing a novel.” “I think you’ve got a screw loose,” he told her. “Are you kidding me? I’m a convicted felon. I’m dangerous as all hell to be around. Not that I would ever hurt you, or anything, but think about the risks involved in being with someone like me.” “I love you, Jack.” “Are you sure you really do?” “Yes.” “You’re sure? You’re not just swept up in some false romance?” “Huh?”


“Some world in your head where you think I’m gonna haul you away somewhere beyond the clouds, and it’s all gonna be milk and honey from here on out, happily ever after and all that?” “What did I tell you last night, Jack? I’m a pretty observant girl. I can see deeper than most people can. And what I see in you is something on the special side. Something so amazing that I can’t even describe it. I’ve never had a connection with someone like the connection I immediately found with you.” “So you’re willing to risk your entire life to be with me—or someone like me, maybe?” “No, it’s you that I want.” “Okay, that’s fine, but it’s not going to be springtime all year round.” “Who said anything about spring? Look, Jack, stop sounding like the Big Bad Wolf. The fact remains that I now know who and what you are and I still want to be with you. Crazy as it sounds, I can get past that. I’m not going to do anything illegal myself. It’s not like I’m going to barge into an elegant party waving a gun over my head, demanding everybody’s jewelry. My only crimes might be worrying about you too much, and wanting to be with you too much of the time.” “And what happens the day they pick us up, and without doing anything more than being with me, you suddenly find yourself in a cell?” She snickered. “So long as my soul is still intact when I die, I’ll let the world take me wherever it wants to.” She kissed him on the cheek, then on the


mouth. “And you think you can keep your soul intact?” “I have so far.” “You’re still young.” “And you’re old and bitter.” “The better to be grumpy with.” “Then there we have it,” she said. “If I can make possibly the stupidest decision of my life, then you should be able to accept me. We both need to accept that there’s something special here. You gotta be willing to give me at least half a chance.” They stood there for a long time, fingers twisting together. “I didn’t realize when I first met you,” he told her, “that you were a lunatic.” “I’m not always,” she said, “but ‘every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.’” “So are you reforming, Roosevelt?” “I think we both are,” she said. “Don’t you feel it?” “I dunno. Maybe.” “Spoken with true confidence.” She kissed him again. “So what are we going to do?” He clasped her hands tight. “This will all be over very soon. When it is, if you’re really sure about this, and you better be damn sure, then it’ll be you and me. Hell, maybe we can even work on making that little fantasy of yours


come true.” “I just want us to be together,” she told him. He held her close. “I like the way that sounds.”

2

At six o’clock Dempster pulled into the driveway of 1045 Coyote’s End Trail and saw that Gardner’s Toyota was already there. Inside, the four of them were at the kitchen table, the hotel layout and a couple of other papers spread out on top of the street map. When Jimmy saw him, he exclaimed with a rare enthusiasm, “Man, this is gonna be one hell of a haul! I bet there’s enough in there right now that, if we wanted, we could buy the hotel when this is all done.” “Yeah, just what I wanna do with it,” Clark said, puffing away on a cigarette. Then to Dempster, “The hell you been?” “A lot of things I need to attend to,” he said. “After this, I’m going back out.” “The hell happened to you? Looks like someone pulled you out of a crushed car and went at you with a baseball bat.” “Little crises last night. Everything’s taken care of.”


No one said anything to that. Sandra had taken Dempster back to his car a little before five, where he’d found a parking ticket stuck under the wiper blade. There were a couple of movies that Sandra wanted to see, so she had gone to one. If Dempster wasn’t waiting for her outside when it was through, she was going to see another. Evan handed him a sheet of paper. “Here’s the list of safe deposit boxes.” “I think you’ll be pleased with the result,” Gardner said. Dempster studied it for a while. Out of two hundred boxes, one hundred and forty-seven of them were currently occupied. He looked over at Clark, who was still puffing on his cigarette. “You need to study this.” Then to Evan, “And so do you.” He handed it back. “That’ll be easy,” Evan said. “Y’think so?” Clark asked. “That’s a lotta boxes to remember.” “Out of two hundred boxes, a hundred and forty-seven of them are full, right? That leaves only fifty-three empty. Remember the empty ones and we’ll be golden.” “Think that’s the way to do it?” Clark asked. “Of course it is.” Dempster looked at Gardner, “You know the combination for the safe?” “Yes, yes, don’t worry, I got it right here.” He picked up another sheet of paper.


“No, don’t show it to us. None of us can do that part.” “What?” “You can’t let any of us know the combination. If any of us let the tiniest hint slip out, they’ll know it was an inside job. The cops will come down on you like you can’t even imagine.” He looked at the sheet of paper in Gardner’s hand. “Have these guys seen it yet?” Gardner gulped air. “No.” “Good. Keep the combination for yourself. Don’t show it to any of us.” Gardner tore out a small section of the page and stuffed it into the pocket of his tan blazer. His hands trembled as he did. To the other three: “Do we have everything we need?” “I think so,” Clark said. “I’ve gone over it all about five times.” “Make sure you go over it another five,” Dempster told him. “What’s with the airplane model glue?” Jimmy asked. “Instead of gloves,” Dempster told him. “Better maneuverability. Two or three coats of glue on your fingertips works just as well as any glove, and this way you have your own hands.” “That’s rather ingenious,” Gardner told him. “I didn’t make it up,” Dempster said. “Now what else you got on that piece of paper?” Gardner hesitated, then handed over the sheet of paper with the small section ripped out of it. “It’s a list of the night staff working tomorrow,” he


said. “I pull the nightshift, which I only do twice a week. I’ll be at the front desk along with this kid, Syd Ramsland, about seventeen years old. He’s pretty new and still doesn’t know everything. He’s strictly by the book so far but he’s also a coward, shouldn’t cause you any trouble at all. There’ll also be one parking attendant in the garage, and we’re probably safe, but there is twentyfour hour room service, so there’ll be a couple guys way back in the depths of the kitchen. The two guards will be in the back room. Remember, they’re armed. Three men will be in the security station, on the other side of the Old House Restaurant, also armed. Most of the year there’s only two, but during the summer, when the season picks up, they add a third, just to be safe. And then there’s Howard, the night watchman. He patrols the entire grounds, every floor. Unlike the rest of security, he isn’t armed with anything other than mace.” “And you have the access code for the engineering area?” “In pencil, down at the bottom of that page.” Dempster read it. 3114, very easy to remember. He looked back at Doug Gardner. “Another question about the safe deposit boxes.” “Yes?” “They have double nose locks. Doesn’t that mean they need two keys?” “Yes, two keys are required to open each box. I thought we’d discussed this already. Why?” “I just wanna make sure you have copies of both keys. Way I understand


it, you or whoever was working would have a key, and the guy who has his stuff in the box would have the other key. We can’t go at them with hammers or anything like that. We need to have both keys.” “Believe me,” Gardner said, a tiny bit smug, “we would never be foolish enough to send a guest away with the only copy of a safe deposit key.” “I just wanna be sure. After all, they were foolish enough to hire you.” Gardner’s lips pressed tight and his eyes narrowed. “Remember,” Dempster said, turning to Clark and Evan, “when you get into that back room and get everything situated, you have to make a good show of pressing Gardner here for information and action. Don’t be afraid to get a little rough.” He watched Gardner’s tight expression reverse into discomfort. “You gotta push him until he gives in and fetches the keys. You gotta push him to work the combination on the safe. And Gardner, you gotta hold out a little, try to put up a fight—but not for too long. Just long enough to make it look good.” “I got it,” Gardner said, his voice shaky. “All right. And you guys remember where to park?” “Sure,” Evan said. “Do you?” “Don’t worry about me,” Dempster said. Then he added, “I’m glad that I stopped by there a couple times. With this layout you only get a very general sense of the place.” “Nothing like first-hand experience,” Clark said.


“And the uniforms are together and ready?” “Everything is good to go.” “Okay, I’m packing up. Won’t be staying here tonight. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” “What is it you do with all your free time?” Evan asked. “I attend to things of a different nature,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

3

At the mall he parked right next to Sandra’s Nissan and waited for about forty-five minutes. He was lost deep in thought when she knocked on his window. “How was the movie?” “Okay, I guess. My ass got numb sitting in the seat and I got too uncomfortable to give the story my full attention. How was work?” She couldn’t help smirking. “Fine. You hungry?” “Yeah. I had a soda during the movie and it’s kind of hollowed me out.” “Hop in.” “Hang on for just a sec.” She went to her car and removed her travel


bags, then came around to the Civic’s passenger side. He unlocked her door. When she climbed in she gave him a kiss, then tossed the bags into the back seat. “In case we never come back for it,” she said. “It’s still registered to Henry Kwatoko anyway.” Dempster nodded. “How are you feeling?” Sandra asked. “A little sore here and there, but overall fine, I guess. Where do you wanna eat?” “Somewhere with you.” “Well, you got that much. You craving anything?” She giggled. “Actually, I’m craving something cheap and greasy.” “What, like fast food?” “Yeah, but I imagine we’ll be eating a lot of that pretty soon, huh? When we drive across the country?” “Who cares? We’ll just be warming up for it.” He thought for a minute, then said, “How about this? We’ll go somewhere cheap for dinner, then we’ll hit this nice hotel I know of, and we’ll have a couple of drinks in the lounge. There we can try to figure out what the hell we’re doing.” “I love that,” she said. “A man with a plan.” They came to a stoplight and he kissed her.


4

“Isn’t this the hotel you were at last night, when you got jumped outside?” “Same hotel, but I got jumped several blocks away,” Dempster told her. “I thought this was a great place. I had a real nice time last night, very relaxing. It’s cozy, don’t you think?” “It certainly is fancy.” They crossed the lobby towards the lounge. Sandra stopped just outside of it to marvel at a tiled stone stand about three feet high and two and a half feet wide, displaying an enormous clay pot encased in glass. “Wow,” she said, “this is really beautiful.” There was a sweet glimmer in her eyes as she studied the pot’s bird motif. “Looks like Acoma, eighteenth century,” Dempster said, “not that I really know anything about pottery.” “Something Jack Dempster doesn’t know much about? Maybe you were lying to me.” They entered the lounge. Twelve or fourteen people were spread out at


various tables, most of them older, somewhere between the ages of sixty and seventy. Spanish guitar music played softly through speakers, adding just the lightest glaze of sound to the quiet, dimly lit ambience. “I’m impressed,” Sandra said. “This place has real class.” “It’s got nothing on you.” She grinned at him. “I don’t know whether to call you a flirt or a suck up.” “I like to think of myself as both.” It wasn’t until they sat down that Dempster realized they’d just sat at the same table he’d sat at last night. He glanced down at the chandelier’s reflection, remembered his conversation with himself, then shrugged it off and looked up into Sandra’s beautiful eyes. “Have I told you how stunning you are?” She smiled. “No, you haven’t.” “Well, you’re stunning.” “Merci beaucoup, vous le bel homme.” “I’m starting to think,” he said, “that that’s the only French you know.” “En haut le vôtre.” “Huh?” “Up yours.” He laughed. “Nice. How would I reverse that?” “By getting me drunk.”


Before it could go any further the waitress with the lazy eye showed up. She studied Dempster briefly, either trying to place him from last night or confused by the new appearance that came courtesy of last night’s beating. “What can I get for you guys?” “What kinds of beer do you have?” Sandra asked. The waitress rattled off a list. Sandra contemplated for a moment, then ordered a St. Pauli Girl. “I’ve heard it’s Germany’s fun-loving beer,” she added. Letting out an incredibly fake laugh, the waitress said, “Okay, and I need to see your I.D., please.” Dempster leaned back in his seat. “What’s French for little baby girl?” he asked. “En haut le vôtre.” She handed the waitress her I.D. The waitress checked it. Once satisfied, she handed it back, then turned to Dempster. “And for you?” “Well, if Germany’s that fun-loving with the stuff, I guess I’ll take one too.” It was clear the waitress wanted to roll her eyes. “Sounds like this table will be fun,” she said. Her tone was jolly, though with a clear sarcastic undertone. Dempster looked at Sandra. “Knock knock.”


“Who’s there?” “Gestapo.” “Gestapo who?” “Ve vill ask ze questions!” Sandra laughed. The waitress turned and walked away. Sandra said, “She looks fairly German.” “She should have a beer with us, then.” Sandra looked about, all through the air. “What?” “I was trying to come up with a joke about your wienerschnitzel.” “Too little too late, I guess.” The waitress returned with two bottles and two glasses. She set them down and asked if there was anything else she could bring them at the moment. “I think that’ll do it,” Dempster said. Then he turned to Sandra. “So where’s the one place in the world you wanna go more than anywhere else?” She poured one of the bottles. “That’s the thing. I wanna go everywhere. When I was five or so, I got in trouble for drawing hieroglyphics all over my bedroom walls because I wanted to live in ancient Egypt.” “I’m sure your parents loved you for that one.” “For an entire month one time, because I wanted to be British, I refused to drink anything other than tea. Another time my friend Emerald and I ruined


my mother’s favorite bed sheets, trying to make kimonos.” She sucked the foam from the top of her glass. “I’ve had thoughts and fantasies about living just about everywhere. I don’t think there’s anywhere on the planet that I don’t want to at least visit.” “All right, well, if things work out, you can ruin the sheets and draw as much as you want on the walls. Sound good?” “Will you make me tea while I do?” “Sure.” He poured his own glass, then asked, “What if we find ourselves stuck somewhere?” “I don’t see us getting stuck unless we choose to stick.” “You know, this isn’t all gonna be peaches and cream.” “Do we need to keep talking about it? I mean, do we need to keep talking about it that way? We’ll figure it out as we go.” “All right, all right. I just can’t help worrying.” “Well stop. Things will happen as they’re supposed to happen, right? Peaches and cream or sardines and milk. Things will happen. We’ll figure them out.” She was so beautiful. The brightness in her face across the table, a source of beauty he could compare to nothing else. He wanted to speak but couldn’t. All he knew for certain was that whatever the emotional thing inside him was, it was the dawn of a new future. He could feel it. “Soon as we get out of this town,” he told her, feeling a little stupid even


as he said it, “I’m gonna buy you something really nice.” A light chuckle escaped her. “What, are you talking, like, diamonds, a gift basket, or a Play Station 3?” “I dunno. Which would you like?” “I’d like the one that comes from here.” She pointed to her chest. “I don’t think any of those can come from your breasts.” “Well maybe one could come from your heart.” “You mean that figuratively, right?” “You’re a goofball.” “And you’re beautiful.” “You’re only saying that because you wanna score.” “I thought I already was gonna score.” “Yeah, well, we’ll see.” She smiled a cute, girly smile at him. Just then a man passed by their table with the countenance of a degraded, washed-up diplomat. About forty-five-ish, with salt and pepper hair and a matching mustache, he wore the dark blue uniform of a police officer, only he didn’t have a gun on his belt, and the badge on his chest was a subtle, embroidered patch complimenting the one sewn onto his sleeve. Dempster watched him say hello to the waitress. Watched them talk, seemingly about nothing for roughly thirty seconds or so. Then they parted, and when the guard neared their table again, Dempster waved to him with a certain dapper air, and asked him for the time. The guard, visage unchanged, took a couple


steps forward and looked at his watch while Dempster looked at his outfit. “Going on ten,” he said. “Thank you.” He watched Howard leave. “Somewhere you need to be?” Turning back to Sandra he lifted his beer, “No, just curious,” and took a sip. “Where are we gonna stay tonight?” “I thought I was staying with you,” she said. “Well, yeah, but I got no place to stay.” “Where have you been staying?” “Somewhere I’m not staying anymore.” “Then how come I checked out of the Quality Inn?” “Because it would be wise to stay somewhere different tonight.” “Ah, I get it.” She smiled. “This is work related, isn’t it?” “Yes, but it’s merely a precaution on my part. Just to keep everything on the safe side.” Sandra sipped her beer, rolled the glass in her hand, studied it with acute intrigue. Then, with her voice deep and husky, downright serious and matter-of-fact, she said, “I’m safe with you, aren’t I?” He took hold of his own beer. “Of course you are.” When he set it down, beyond Sandra, something moved within the lounge and caught his attention. It grew stronger until it dominated him, and


when Sandra asked him what was wrong, all he could do was gape at what he saw behind her. “Jack, what is it? You’re freaking me out.” The longest moment of them all, trapping him where he was, pointing at him, then advancing. His toes curled up in his shoes. He stared with mistrust, watched the hips sway, waver with an air of frustration, like a snake whose strike has fallen short. He watched her cross the lounge. And then she was standing at their table. There were sparks in her eyes, and tightly pressed lips on her mouth, which opened just long enough to say, “Sometimes the world is too small, don’t you think?” Grasping for words, finding none, he looked down at the table, and tried to find his reflection, hoping it might offer up some advice. It felt as though he was walking down a dark street, a narrow street, and finally into a dead end. His mind scrambled for something to say. Anything that might prevent disaster; but all that came to him were snippets of random song lyrics, not a single one of which had even the slightest relevance to what was going on. Carly looked him over, said, “You look like you were ravaged by dogs,” then turned to Sandra. “I’m gonna take a guess that you’re Sandra,” she said. “Yeah, that’s right.” “Hi, I’m Carly.” She extended her hand. “We spoke on the phone.” Sandra shook her hand with extreme hesitance, and cut a sudden, fuming glance across the table at Dempster, who felt his stomach constrict.


Now you’ve done it, he told himself. Here’s where everything comes together and then falls apart before your eyes. Here’s where everything crumbles. Sandra, shoulders taut, reached for her drink. She took a contemplative sip, then set it down, and watched the bubbles in it rise. Her lips were as tight as Carly’s now. And Carly, with that calculated smirk on her face, narrowed her eyes at Dempster and said, “You two having fun?” Dempster squirmed, like he was being called on to answer a question at school when he hadn’t studied. He offered a reluctant “Yeah,” then gave a nervous shrug, proving himself to be at a loss. He kicked himself and dug deeper, unable to find anything other than some lyrics from Mary Chapin Carpenter, and even they were muddled. Before he could make a complete fool of himself, Sandra chimed in. “We’re having a blast.” “I’m glad to hear it,” Carly said. “We’re having such a good time,” Sandra went on, “that not thirty seconds before you showed up, we were asking ourselves, ‘What’s the one thing in the world that could possibly ruin such a perfect night?’ And you know what we concluded? We concluded that the only thing would be an insecure redhead who can only survive the world by walking around with a trashy façade and acting like she owns it.” She lifted her beer.” Carly, face as cold as winter, looked at Dempster. “What’s her problem?”


“My problem,” Sandra said, “is that you’ve interrupted a very nice, possibly romantic evening I’m having with Jack. Now, if I didn’t know who you were, that might be one thing. But you say your name is Carly, and therefore, without any other consideration, you can get out of here and leave us alone.” More than taken aback, Carly narrowed her eyes at Sandra, and said, “I wasn’t talking to you.” “I don’t care,” Sandra said. “You weren’t invited over here.” “Well, do you speak for both of you? Are you the one that wears the pants? Doesn’t Jack get to speak for himself?” Both women looked at him. Both women were angry. His toes curled in his shoes again. He drank down the rest of his beer. Then in a voice that sounded vaguely like his own he said, “I’m trying to have a drink with Sandra, Carly.” And he left it at that. He waited, looked for the waitress with the lazy eye so he could order another beer. So he could, even for a moment, escape the hell he found himself in. The waitress was nowhere to be seen. Carly shifted her weight to one leg, placed a hand on her hip, and said, “I like the way you two treat people who come over to say hello.” “Get lost,” Sandra said. “Go whore around on some other guy.” “Don’t you talk to me that way, you bitch.” Finally, Dempster said, “As much as I love listening to the two of you tear each other new assholes, it’s getting late.” To Carly he said, “I would tell you that it was nice to see you, but it’s not. So run along and have a good


night, doing whatever it is you’re going to do.” “I’m sorry, Jack.” “Okay.” “It’s like I told you: sometimes when you really like someone—” “You already told him,” Sandra said. “Good night.” Without another word Carly spun on her heel and walked away, holding herself so rigid she looked like she might implode. Dempster turned to Sandra. “Look, uh…” “I know, shut up.” He hoped the tense silence wouldn’t last, but worried that it might. “This town is too small,” he said. She didn’t say anything. “I’ll be glad when we’re gone from here.” She lifted her beer and drained it. He grasped for words, found some, and tested. “It’ll be really nice—” “Do you know how fucking embarrassing that was?” Her tone cut through him like a razor. “You couldn’t say a fucking thing? I had to stand up for you? And to Carly of all people?” She shook her head in disgust. “I feel so sick right now, I…I don’t know what to do.” Absent-mindedly, she scratched the side of her nose. “I can’t believe you didn’t stand up for us.” He looked at her. It was a deep, burrowing stare as he tried to read her on a deeper level. He tried and tried, and realized he was failing. “I’m sorry,”


he said. “You didn’t give me much choice.” “Oh, well, that makes it not terrible.” “You cut in before I could even speak.” “And what were you going to say?” Her eyes were cold, her countenance colder. “I’m sorry,” he said. Now the waitress showed up. “You two want another round?” Dempster looked at Sandra, shrugged. “You’re wearing the pants right now,” he said. Sandra gave him a look that frightened him. “No,” she told the waitress. “Just the check, please.” When the waitress went away, with her voice calm and her breathing steady, Sandra said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that, well, I just got a slap in the face, that’s all.” “Really? Cause I was having a great time.” “Quit the sarcasm. I got a slap in the face because I’ve just seen that you’re human.” She looked around for the waitress but didn’t seem to see her. “It wasn’t fair of me, but I’ve had you up on a pedestal, and that’s the dumbest thing I could ever do.” “I never said I was perfect,” he told her. “No,” she said. “You clearly are not perfect. You have flaws, maybe a lot of them.” She drew a breath and looked into his eyes. “But, with your flaws, I guess you could say that you’re your own kind of perfect.”


“So you don’t hate me?” Her eyebrows leapt up her forehead. “I’m still pissed, if that’s what you’re wondering. But no, I don’t hate you. How could I hate you?” “Well,” he said, “I can be pretty repelling.” “Frustrating might be a better word,” she told him. “You don’t repel me at all.” “Really? Wow, I repel myself quite often.” “I know. I can tell.” The waitress brought the check. Sandra insisted on paying it, her argument being that she was the one wearing the pants at the moment. When the waitress was gone, Dempster reached across the table and took Sandra’s hand. “You still want a part of this?” For a brief time she showed nothing but a cold glare. Then her lips shaped into a smile, and she squeezed his hand. “I still want this,” she said. “I like the fact that you’re human. It makes you real, rather than a character I’ve conjured in my fantasies. In spite of how screwed up that was, honestly, I might even like you more.” “I’m glad,” he said. They didn’t speak much for the rest of that night.


Chapter Fourteen

“She what?” “She wants to keep it.” Worry lines etched into every inch of Mike’s face. He lipped a cigarette and watched the train tracks as they dwindled and vanished into the distance. Then his lips quivered and his face flushed. Without ever lighting it, he snatched the cigarette from his mouth and flung it onto the tracks, then dropped his arms to the rail and his head into his arms. Jack watched his friend’s shoulders and upper back tremble, bounce up and down in uncontrollable little spasms. When he lifted his crumpled face and looked up to the sky, his sleeves were damp. Jack’s knees grew weak. He leaned against the rail as his stomach


formed a lump of ice. He peered into the rear train car. No one gave a damn that they were out here. “What are we going to do?” Mike asked, wiping a stream of tears from his face. He was still looking up at the sky. Jack looked out to the farmland whipping by them. They had only left the Jefferson Depot about fifteen minutes ago on the AC&J Scenic Line and had about another forty-five minutes until they returned. He tried to imagine what his parents would say. What their reactions would be. No matter what angle he looked at it from—long shot, close up, or rewriting the script altogether—he couldn’t figure it out. “I guess we’ll never really know,” Mike said, wiping his face again. “We’ll never really know whose it is.” Then he looked at him, his face still wrinkled, still red, still running rivers. “We’re having a baby.” It was hot outside. Jack could smell the land. The earth. The air. It was bitter and caustic and as much as he hated himself for it, so was he. It took nearly all he had to keep himself from climbing up onto the rail and jumping off the train in hopes of splitting his skull wide open. “Do you want a baby, Mike?” Mike’s head shook slowly from side to side and his eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Are you serious?” He’d always hated when people did it to him, but now he found himself answering Mike’s question with a question. “Do you think there’s something


funny about this?” “No.” “Are you sure? What if I tell you our situation while I do a little dance? Would that make it funny?” “Cut it out.” Jack steeled himself, drew a breath, then said, “There’s only one thing we can do.” “What’s that?” “We can’t let her.” “What’d you mean?” Though it might have seemed like it was for effect when he paused, it wasn’t. “We can’t let her have that baby.” “What are we supposed to do? Tell her it’s a two against one vote? It’s her body and she can do whatever she wants with it.” “But there are four lives at stake here. Yours, mine, Shelley’s, and a little baby boy or girl that will never know anything other than confusion and misery. That’s what we’re looking at, Mike. I hate it as much as you do but that’s the reality of our situation. No one is doing the kid any favors by bringing it into the world. Not at this time. No way, no how.” “I’m pretty sure I know what you’re saying,” Mike said, “but tell me in plain English anyway.” “We have to get rid of it,” Jack told him. “We have to abort it.”


Mike rolled his eyes. His attention once more turned up to the sky. “What are we gonna do? Tell her we won’t be friends with her anymore if she decides to go through with this?” He grabbed Mike by the arm. “Listen, Goddammit. We’re not just playing with her life and we’re not just playing with an unborn child’s. We’re playing with our own. If she goes through with this, we got nothing. Nothing, ever again. We’ve cashed in our chips, and we both know what the rest of life will bring us. Are you prepared for that, Mike? Are you ready to throw away the rest of your life?” He saw Mike searching his eyes, and the tension in his mouth as his lips pressed together. Then, “So what do we do?” “Simple enough,” Jack said: “We get her to abort it. Then we’re all friends again. We all go about our merry way.” “She wants to keep it. That’s what she told you. I’ve never known any girl to change her mind because of a guy.” “Well, we help her change her mind. Or if we have to, we make her change her mind.” Mike pulled out another cigarette. This time he lighted it, and stared out at the fast-moving tracks whipping out and away from beneath them. The worry lines disappeared and his face became expressionless. “How do we even know it belongs to one of us? I mean, really? How do


we know for sure it isn’t someone else’s?” “None of us have been with anyone else. She knows it’s ours. We all know it’s ours.” The train seemed to tear along with an angrier rhythm now. Mike puffed on his cigarette for a contemplative moment. “She’s too young,” he said after a time. “I’m too young.” “We’re all too young,” Jack told him. “We’ve still got two fucking years worth of high school ahead of us,” Mike said. “I wanna go to the Rhode Island School of Design.” He sneered. “I don’t think that’ll ever happen. That won’t ever happen if she decides to make this decision for all of us.” He looked Jack in the eye. His face had gone pale. “I’m not ready to ruin my life yet.” “Then it’s settled.” Mike gave him a cigarette and the two of them smoked and watched the Ohio land recede. Finally Mike flicked his cigarette over the rail, turned to Jack and cleared his throat. “So tell me what your plan is.”

#

He woke up. It was dark and his body was hot. He slid quietly out from under the sheets, discovering when the air hit him that he was damp from


head to toe. He looked over at Sandra. Moonlight dripped in through the motel window and lay softly upon her face. Her skin appeared pale as milk, fragile as tissue. Under this silver glow she looked more vulnerable than he had seen before. Like a child. He got up off the bed, went to the bathroom and drank a glass of water, then splashed cold water onto his face. His body was still stiff and there was a sharp pain between his shoulder blades. He stretched his arms as far as they would go then returned to bed, staying on top of the covers, unable to get comfortable. “You okay?” He looked at her in the moonlight. “I thought you were sleeping.” “I was,” she said, and sat up. “Can’t you sleep?” “I was sleeping just fine. Just had a bad dream is all.” She rubbed his arm. “Remember what it was about?” “No.” He sat up and took her hand, gazed up at the ceiling, then at her. It was dark, except for the moonlight. She was wearing a T-shirt and panties and everything about her was a faded gray cast in shadow. Finally he said, “I’m scared.” “Of what?” He couldn’t tell if she was sleepy or distanced. He looked at her then looked away, feeling ashamed. “All of it,” he said. “I’m afraid of everything.” He felt his face screw up. Felt the choke pushing its


way up. He shook it off, and tried twice to scratch an itch on his arm. Sandra watched him in silence. Her breasts rose and fell rhythmically. After the momentary lull, she told him, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Without realizing it, he was slumped in her arms. She slid around behind him, her arms around his chest, and kissed him once on the neck. You’re walking a doomed path and you’re taking her with you, he said to himself. All the roads on your map lead to torment. You should know that by now. He craned his head and found her shadowed face. “I love you,” he said, and kissed her. She kissed him back. It was so quiet; the roar on the other side of silence had to be tremendous. “Let’s go back to sleep,” she said, and slid out from behind him. “Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes. “I have a big day tomorrow.” “Good night,” she said, then settled down and closed her eyes. Dempster stared at the ceiling for a long time. When sleep finally came, he didn’t have any dreams.


Chapter Fifteen

“Got everything?” “Yeah, we got it.” Dempster looked around the house one last time. Probably the nicest house he’d ever stayed in. After tomorrow he could maybe even buy a place like this, if he wanted. Not outright, of course, but he could make a good down payment. Wouldn’t leave much to start that new life with, though. He and Sandra had stashed their stuff behind the McDonald’s on Cerrillos Road. Hopefully it would still be there. He’d left Sandra at a bar, the only thing still open at nearly one in the morning, a large place on the way out of town, with an open parking lot and large front windows she could watch for him through. He hoped she was doing all right. More, he hoped she would still


be there when he showed up. “And you know where you’re going when we blaze?” “Sure, we know,” Jimmy said. “All right.” “You know,” Clark said, “this thing is gonna be huge. Think it would be a good idea, when we get there, to lay low at Frazier’s a couple days until the heat’s died down?” “We’ll worry about that when we get there,” Dempster told him, also wondering what they would all say when Sandra popped up with him from out of nowhere. He looked at Evan, saw the man was shaking a little as he hoisted up his bag. “You okay?” Evan looked at him with a face of stone. “Beautiful, baby,” he said in monotone, and walked away without another word. They loaded everything up into the two cars. As they did, Clark rambled on and on with some long and involved story about a guy he knew who convinced his girlfriend to marry some wealthy guy so they could knock him off and score a big inheritance. “Problem was,” Clark said, “it wasn’t his money. It was his mother’s, and she was still alive, though just barely hanging on. Had this clause in her will that said if her son were to somehow die before she did, all her money was supposed to go to cancer research or some such thing.” Jimmy seemed the only one interested. Dempster half-listened while he


coated his fingertips in airplane model glue. “Well, the husband catches them at the house one night, right? Came home early from work or something. And the two guys have this scuffle in the bedroom, and Joe manages to get the dude down on the bed and smother him with a pillow. Well, Mary—that’s the girl—gets all upset. Then they realize the reality of their situation. They can kiss that inheritance goodbye. So get this: they take him out back to where they kept this big chest freezer. Y’know, like you see at those Ma and Pa country general stores for ice cream and soda and stuff. And they lock the poor dead bastard in it and crank it up, freezing and preserving his body until he can appear to have died after his mother has passed.” “All right, guys, let’s go,” Dempster said, kind of wanting to hear the end. He wiped down the handles of his car then climbed in, checked to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be, and then watched Evan back the other car out of the driveway. Once they were gone he put on a baseball cap, wiped down the interior of the car and got ready.

2

Over the last two hours Doug Gardner had casually made sure that


everything was where it was supposed to be. Now he stood at the front computer, making sure to keep in front of the silent alarm trigger underneath, completing an online reservation someone had sent by e-mail: two people, two nights, no children. Syd stood at the desk about five feet down from him, filling out some form or other, though it kind of looked like he was drawing pictures. Gardner didn’t like Syd too much. Thought he was a bit of a prick, a kid who came from money and only had this job because his parents felt it would be good for him to have some experience and build some character. All he was really doing though was saving up money to soup up his car or “pimp my ride” as the little white kid from Portsmouth, New Hampshire had once said. So even though Syd Ramsland was good and pure, there was an underlying air about him that said he didn’t give a shit any which way. It was just a job to keep his parents off his back. He wasn’t relying on it to survive. Gardner finished making the reservation and sent back an e-mail confirmation, then found himself both nervous and giddy as he looked at the clock and saw that it was just after one. The reality of what was going to happen was so bizarre to him that he couldn’t quite grasp it. Like a tangible illusion, very real, but in no possible way real. It was good, though. It was going to be a great thing. After tonight he could start making plans. In a month or two he could give notice, tie up some loose ends, head for California, and finally get the hell out of this overpriced town filled with priggish parvenus


and trust-fund babies and old oil barons from Texas. He’d be done catering to wealthy people and their unreasonable, undeserved and out-of-touch demands. He hated their smugness. Hated their holier-than-thou attitudes. He wanted to be one of them and he wasn’t. And even if he could be, something told him that he would never fit in—he would never be one of them; and this filled him with so much rage and envy that almost every time he helped a guest, he wanted to wring their necks. He wanted to kill them. He wanted to hurt them for not caring that he existed. For hardly nodding to him or barely even looking at him. For not giving a damn about his life as he bent over and they fucked him in the ass. He hated this place. Not just the hotel but the entire city, and he couldn’t wait to be through with it. “Did I tell you about the hydraulics I’m gonna get?” Syd asked, scribbling away like a third-grader. Yes, Gardner thought with much aggravation, but I suppose I’m gonna hear it again. He looked closer and saw that Syd was in fact drawing a picture of his car.

3


Evan angle-parked the white Pontiac Grand Am in the very first parking space outside of the County Clerk’s Office on Grant Avenue—just a block from the Eldorado—and killed the engine. Tension like molasses filled the entire car as the three of them sat quietly, waiting, listening to an imaginary clock tick off the seconds. They could faintly hear the heavy drumbeat thudding away behind them at the nightclub Swig, where they’d all gone the night before Dempster had shown up. Clark rolled an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “I tell you about me and Julie the other night?” “About fifteen times,” Jimmy said. “Sorry. It’s the high point of my life.” “You need to get laid more often,” Jimmy told him. “Oh yeah?” Lipping his cigarette, Clark put flame to it. “And when was the last time you stretched your meat, Mister Crazy College Girl video buyer?” Jimmy searched and searched for a response, and finally came up with, “Fuck you.” Evan didn’t say anything. The entire time he just stared through the windshield at the County Clerk’s Office. He hadn’t said a thing since they’d left the house. A long silence ensued. Then, “Anyone up for a game?” Jimmy asked. “No,” Clark told him.


4

Dempster pulled directly in front of the Eldorado Hotel and shut off the lights before coming to a complete stop. The place was deserted. There wasn’t another car—or person—in sight. He made sure his disguise was on properly and then got out, took a quick glance into the underground parking garage and saw no one, then headed up the narrow steps to the right leading above it. The door. The exterior entrance to the security area. A streetlight cast his shadow against it. He pressed his ear to the brown metal and listened. The faint and muffled sound of a TV sitcom and a couple distinct yet mild chuckles; then he heard a door open and close, and a voice said, “What’d I miss?” He didn’t want to try the door until he knew he had to go inside that way. Chances were it was locked anyhow. Instead he surveyed the area around the door, and as he did he suddenly heard someone cough below him, at the entrance of the parking garage. Over the railing he saw the man’s shadow. He heard the click of a cigarette lighter and a moment later a puff a smoke drifted up to him. Dempster eased over to the top of the stairway and crouched, waiting.


After about a minute the cigarette flicked into the street. The shadow receded then there was a quick-step and it returned, paused in the entryway, then with an elaborate sigh the man walked over to investigate Dempster’s car. Softly and in step with the man, Dempster descended the stairs. He caught up with him and, before the man knew what was going on, rabbitpunched him. The man hit the concrete and Dempster dragged him back down into the parking garage and tucked him away into a quaint little storage area. Inside the garage the humming of a generator reverberated throughout the place. There weren’t any cameras in here. Bad for the hotel, but fortunate for him. Over the rows of sleeping cars he saw a passageway to the right that led up and appeared to curve around in the direction of the security area. Brisk but steady, he cut between parked cars and entered. The same style fluorescent lights as in the garage were brighter now in the narrow, hooked corridor, and his feet became soundless pads when the concrete changed to brown threadbare carpet. At the curve he took it slow, crept around the corner at a snail’s pace, and peered to the hall’s end, which made a T, to the left almost utter darkness, to the right a brighter fluorescent glow. He withdrew his gun and approached. When he came to the end he stopped before entering the hallway, and chanced a quick look down to the right. The hallway emptied into a large glass window and a windowed door without any lettering on it. Through the two of them he could see the backs of three men as well as a small television screen. One man was bald, one man


was blonde, and one man was black. He didn’t care what they were watching. Down to the left the hallway made an L to the right, from which a soft golden glow like artificial candlelight radiated. He knew exactly where he was. He crouched down and went right. When he reached the door he eased up and peered through the window, saw the backs of all three men, and rose. There were twelve monitors for the cameras throughout the bottom floor of the hotel. Nobody was watching them. Dempster opened the door and stepped inside, and before anyone had a chance to move he said, “There’s a gun on one of you. Any of you moves, one of you dies.” The men froze. The laugh track of the sitcom blew up like a smothered scream and then died away with soft breath. Dempster went up behind the nearest man and slid the revolver out of his holster. “Move closer to the TV,” he said to that one, and once complied with he moved to the next nearest man and relieved him of his gun. When the third man was disarmed Dempster backed away a bit and asked, “Good show?” Nobody spoke. He asked the question again. “It’s a—a rerun,” the bald man said, a quaver in his voice. “What show is it?” “Friends.” “Never seen it. You like it?” “Y-yes.”


“What’s your name?” The bald man was shaking now, certain the gun was on him. “TThomas.” “Do people call you Thomas, or do they call you Tom?” “They call—they c-call me Tom.” “Who are your friends, Tom?” The use of his name seemed to calm Tom down a little bit. He still trembled, his voice still trilled, but it appeared to bring him back down to Planet Earth, or at least somewhere nearby. “That’s Martin”—he indicated the black man—“and that there is Brian,” indicating the blonde. “Hello, Martin. Hello, Brian.” Neither Martin nor Brian said anything. “Tom, I want you to do something for me. I want you to disable the recording of those cameras and shut off the monitors.” Tom didn’t move, just sat there and shook. “Go on, Tom.” Slowly, cautiously, Tom got up out of his chair and went over to the surveillance equipment. “I know how that stuff works, Tom, so don’t try to pull a fast one on me.” Tom, now in tears, his voice quiet and shaky, said, “Okay.” He shut everything down the way Dempster understood it should be shut down. When he was finished Dempster said calmly, “I’m glad you all carry


handcuffs. That saves me some trouble. I want you to do me another favor, Tom.” Apparently Tom was afraid to look at him. “I want you to cuff Martin’s hands behind his back, and then I want you to take Martin’s cuffs and handcuff Brian’s hands behind his back. You got it, Tom?” Tom, still shaking, nodded that he understood. “Remember, Tom, so long as you do what I say, no one will get hurt. Reach your hands behind you, Martin.” He watched Tom close the metal cuffs around Martin’s wrists. As he removed Martin’s cuffs from his belt, Tom softly said to him, “I’m sorry.” “He knows you’re sorry, Tom. It’s not your fault. You, Brian, go on and put your hands behind your back.” When the two guards were cuffed Dempster had Tom remove all three of their belts. Tom tied Martin’s feet together, then Brian’s, then sat down on the floor and tied his own. “Now go ahead and cuff your own hands behind your back, Tom.” It took him a minute, but he managed. “Now, I want all three of you to lie down on the floor.” It was tough for Martin and Brian, both being bound the way they were and sitting in chairs. Dempster helped ease them first to their knees then down onto their stomachs. He knew enough through Gardner to know what the guards carried on them, as well as the types of things kept in the room. He opened a couple of desk drawers until he found a roll of duct tape and a pair of


scissors. Peeling three strips of tape—carefully, using his knuckles as much as he could so as not to tamper with the glue on his fingertips—he covered their mouths, then ran the roll around each man’s feet to ensure the belts wouldn’t give out. He put the tape and scissors back in the drawer, collected the keys that had been on each belt, as well as the three revolvers, and stepped to the door. “Just be good and hang out for a little while. It’ll all be over before you know it.” He could hear the three men breathing fast and deep through their nostrils. It was an odd mixture with the laugh track of the TV show. “I’ll leave the TV on for you,” he told them, “so you can still watch your show.”

5

“Shall we?” Evan, Clark and Jimmy, disguises in place, climbed out of the car. On the third story patio of Swig a couple stood laughing to one another, clearly drunk. They never saw the three men as they went around to the back of the Pontiac and opened the trunk. They didn’t see them remove three pistols, a


9mm SIG Sauer for Jimmy, a Colt Python revolver for Clark, and a Bulgarian Arcus 94 for Evan. Clark also removed a small black shoulder bag in which was a small folded laundry bag. Evan unzipped his personal bag and rooted through it for a moment. “What,” Clark asked, sliding his Python into the shoulder holster under his uniform, “you forget to brush your teeth?” Evan tossed him a disinterested glare but didn’t say anything. Instead he withdrew from the bag something that made Clark gasp. “What the hell are you doing with that thing?” Evan looked at Clark, and Clark saw something truly, deeply scary in his eyes. Jimmy caught sight of what Evan held in his hands. All he could say was “Jesus Christ.” “Want things done right, don’t we?” Evan said as he put a couple parts together. “Things are gonna be done just fine,” Clark told him. “There’s no reason to worry.” “Of course not. Things are gonna go great. This is just a little insurance.” He folded the stock of the Micro Uzi and placed the weapon into a plastic grocery bag, bunched the bag around it and worked the package under his uniform, at his back behind his belt.


“You’re out of your mind,” Jimmy said, remembering the morning Evan nearly killed him for moving his bag. “Where in the world did you get that thing?” “We’re on a schedule here,” Evan said. “Let’s get going.” “Oh my God,” Clark said, glancing briefly up to heaven. The couple on the patio laughed again. They never looked down to the street. Now they went back inside.

6

“I don’t want to rice it out, y’know, I just want it to look sweet. And I still need to upgrade the speakers, put a couple 12’s in the trunk, probably. And I also have to have the CV joints replaced because I was doing doughnuts in reverse at, like, 15 mpg.” Gardner wasn’t sure how much more of this he could handle. He wasn’t even looking at the kid, wasn’t giving him the slightest bit of attention. But on and on he went, lost in his own little king-of-the-road world. “Natalie thought it was whore-monger.” Gardner didn’t know who Natalie was. Nor had he ever heard anyone say “whore-monger”. His nerves were jittering like a frightened rabbit on an


electric fence. Even if he wanted to listen to Syd, even if he was totally and utterly fascinated by what the kid was saying, he wouldn’t have been able to focus on it. And as it was, if Syd didn’t shut up and soon, Gardner was going to lose his head. The phone rang. Gardner thought he was going to jump out of his shoes. Instead he drew a breath and picked it up. “Front desk,” he said with a strained voice, hoping, praying the call would postpone the upcoming events but knowing it wouldn’t. Some guy up on the third floor was complaining that his television wasn’t working. He had ordered a movie—no doubt what type— and couldn’t get the damn thing to work at all. “Someone will be right up,” Gardner told him politely, then cradled the phone and turned to Syd. “Go on up to room 327 and help the poor guy with his TV.” “What’s wrong with it?” “I don’t know. Said he can’t get it to work and that he ordered a movie. I can only imagine what kind. Sounded more concerned than he did upset.” “Which movie you think it is?” Syd asked. “Ashton’s Auditions, or Down Mammary Lane?” Gardner couldn’t help chuckling. It momentarily broke up the tension he was experiencing. For as much as he couldn’t stand Syd overall, the kid could be pretty cool at times. “Just go up and check it out, would you?”


With a smirk Syd put down his pencil, tossed the drawing of his car under the desk, went through the two-way door and over to the elevators. Gardner heard the ding, and a moment later Syd was gone. Maybe he wouldn’t come back until after this was all over. That would make things easier. He couldn’t help worrying, though, about what might happen if Syd came back right in the middle of everything. Or worse, if he saw what was going on and managed to get away unseen and call the cops. He didn’t worry about it for long. Before he could dwell on it and pick it apart, three men in gray janitorial uniforms entered.

7

Dempster stashed the guards’ guns and keys in the parking garage then raced back up to the hallway. This time he made a left, away from the security office, and then a right into the amber glow. A short trot later he was beside the entryway of the Old House restaurant, looking out across the lobby to the three elevators. He waited, crouched in the shadows, gun at the ready, listening to a conversation between Gardner and some young kid. “Go on up to room 327 and help the poor guy with his TV.” “What’s wrong with it?”


“I don’t know. Said he can’t get it to work and that he ordered a movie. I can only imagine what kind. Sounded more concerned than he did upset.” “Which movie you think it is? Ashton’s Auditions, or Down Mammary Lane?” “Just go up and check it out, would you?” He heard the sound of the two-way door. A moment later the kid stood in front of the elevators and pressed the top button. There was a ding, a door opened, and the kid stepped inside. Dempster waited another good minute, worrying about when that kid was going to come back, when all of a sudden he heard someone say, “Howdy. We’re the night cleaning crew.” He wanted to look but didn’t let himself. Instead he crouched further. “Why are you here at this hour?” Gardner asked. “You’re not supposed to be here until five.” “We were told to come now,” an even, steady voice informed him. “I wasn’t notified of this. And who are you guys? You’re not the usual cleaning crew.” “They’re out on another job at this hour. That’s why they sent us.” “But you’re not supposed to be here until five.” The even, steady voice asked, “Can we speak to the night manager?” “I am the night manager,” Gardner said. “I am for tonight, anyway. Where’s all your equipment?” “Outside in the van. May I use your phone?”


Dempster heard the sound of the phone being picked up, simultaneously hearing the swing of the two-way door. A couple seconds later the phone was cradled. That was his cue. Dempster put away his gun and entered the lobby. In those few seconds a lot had happened. Clark already had his gun in Gardner’s back and was leading him over to the door into the back room. Jimmy stood in the lobby just outside the two-way door, while Evan entered and caught up with Clark. Dempster quickly raced behind the desk and joined the others just as Gardner got the door open. Rather than doing their jobs, the two guards were engaged in a card game. The moment they saw the man with the thick mustache and glasses and the gun held at Gardner’s head, they froze, cards in hand. “Don’t drop your cards,” Dempster told them, his own gun out again. “Hang on to those cards with your life, and keep them raised like you’re studying your hand.” Other than involuntary shaking, both men remained just as they were. Evan walked over and relieved each man of his sidearm. “What are your names?” Tears ran down the face of the man on the left. He shut his eyes tight then opened them again, but the tears kept coming. “We’ll just call him Teary Eyes,” Evan said. “Shut up,” Dempster told him. Then to the guard, “What’s your name?”


The guard drew a deep breath. With his voice as shaky as his hands he said, “J-Justin.” “Hello, Justin. I want you to do me a favor. I want you to shut off all these cameras. We all know how they work so don’t try to pull a fast one, okay? Are you left handed or right handed, Justin?” “R-r-right-right handed-ed.” “Okay. I want you to get up and turn everything off. Keep your cards in your left hand and do it all with your right. You understand, Justin?” A facial twitch had taken over Justin’s right cheek. He closed his eyes again and nodded. “Good. Now go on. No one’s gonna get hurt as long as you do what we say.” Justin got up. He approached the equipment, extended his left hand up and far away from him, five cards shaking in it like an odd flag in an irregular wind. Once everything was shut down Dempster had Justin move over to the opposite wall, both hands on his cards. “What’s your name?” he asked the other guard. Far more calm and collected than Justin, almost comfortable, though smart enough to understand all the death pointed at him, the guard said, “Andrew.” “Your friends call you Andrew, or Andy?” “Andy.”


“Okay, Andy, join Justin over there.” Andy slowly rose to his feet and joined his trembling partner. Evan covered them with his Arcus 94. To Gardner Clark said, “What’s your name?” “Doug.” “All right, Doug.” Clark pushed him towards the safe. “Open that up.” “It—it-it needs keys.” “And where are the keys?” “I—I don’t know.” Clark shoved him against the safe. “You know where they are.” Gardner was shaking now. It was clear he was not putting on an act. He was truly terrified. “It’s in the top drawer of that desk.” He indicated the desk beside the door. Dempster opened the drawer. “There are a lot of keys in here, Doug. One’s gotta be for the safe. I imagine some of these others are for those safe deposit boxes there, right? I don’t know what these others are for, though. Spares for the rooms or something, maybe? Whatever. Come over here, Doug. Get the keys for the safe.” Gardner, hands held up, crossed the room over to the desk. He pulled out the key to the safe, then at Dempster’s insistence removed both sets of keys for the safe deposit boxes. One of the two sets was in the bottom drawer, which had to be unlocked with a different key.


“Now open the safe,” Clark told him. “You’ll never get away with this,” Andy said, his calm disposition dwindling. “That’s the most contrived statement I’ve ever heard, Andy,” Evan said. He advanced on the guard, grabbed him by the collar and shoved his pistol into the man’s face. “Chill out,” Dempster told him. Evan reluctantly backed off. It was then that Dempster noticed a bulge tucked under the back of Evan’s belt. What the hell was that? “Go on and open the safe,” Clark told Gardner again. Gardner moved in, shaking as much as the guards. He inserted the key and turned it, then looked at Clark as though at a loss for what to do. “Do the combination, Doug.” “I don’t know the combination,” Gardner said. “Bullshit.” “I swear I don’t!” “Doug,” Dempster said calmly. “Do you know Andy and Justin?” “Of course I know them.” “Do you like them?” The look he gave was one of utter confusion. “Yes.” “Okay, we’ll have to play a little hardball. Get to work on that combination or we’re gonna have to blow out Justin’s kneecaps.”


“Jesus Christ,” Andy said. Justin started shaking so bad it looked like he was having an epileptic fit. His face was as pale as snow and as wet as a river. Evan smiled. Gardner looked at Justin, then at Clark, then at Evan, and finally at Dempster. He turned around and began working the combination. The sweat in his thin hair reflected the light. When the safe opened Dempster announced that he was leaving Doug, Justin, and Andy in capable hands. He left the room and joined Jimmy out in the lobby. “I thought some kid was supposed to be here with him,” Jimmy whispered. “He’s up helping a guest with his TV. Nothing we can do about it but keep a sharp lookout for him.” “Everything under control in there?” “So far so good. Cameras are off. Safe’s open. I dunno what’s in it but it’s a start.” “I can’t help it,” Jimmy said. “I’m a little freaked. I hope we get this over and done with soon.” “Just keep your wits about you,” Dempster told him. “Everything will be fine.” Jimmy started to say something else. Something that seemed like it


might have been important. Then he bit his tongue. Before Dempster could ask what was getting him Jimmy motioned over to the side. To the stairway. The stairway up to the computers. There was a shadow. Dempster motioned for Jimmy to get behind the front desk then moved over to the side of the stairway. Came the sound of descending footsteps. A woman cleared her throat. Did Gardner know she was up there? Maybe she’d been there for hours. It didn’t matter now because a woman was coming down the stairs. She was middle-aged. She had blue pants and a blue shirt and her hair was brown and she was studying a small stack of papers in her hands. She looked up to tell the people behind the front desk goodnight and saw Jimmy pointing a gun at her. No one needed to tell her to freeze. “Get behind the desk,” Dempster said, surprising her because she hadn’t yet known there was more than one. She joined Jimmy, Dempster following. “Lie down on your face and keep your head down. Don’t try to see what’s going on.” Overcome with shock, overwhelmed by a situation she didn’t really comprehend, she didn’t react, just did as she was told. “What’s your name?” “Marie.” “Is there anyone else up there, Marie? Anyone else up there at the computers?”


“Yes,” Marie said. “There are a couple of people.” “Are you sure? I don’t believe you.” “There is. One of them is a cop.” “You’re very funny, Marie,” Jimmy told her. “What’s funny about it?” “It’s funny because you don’t quite understand the situation you’re dealing with.” “I know that I’m lying face down behind the front desk of a hotel and I have two guns pointed at my back.” “But you also want to take a chance and see if we’ll run off if we think there are others up there,” Dempster told her. “We’re already outnumbered and haven’t had a problem yet. No one’s been hurt so far but that could change. It could change very quickly, Marie.” He paused here to let the information settle in her mind. “Now, is there anyone else up there?” She sighed. It was a frightened sigh. “No.” “You sure?” “Yes, I’m sure. I’m just afraid.” “Don’t be afraid, Marie. This will all be over soon and you can go back to your room. Just lie there and keep still. Can you do that, Marie?” “Yes, I—I think so.” “Good.” Dempster rose and moved swiftly over to the back room and looked in. Other than some papers, the safe was now empty. Evan had his


gun on Gardner, who was tying up Justin and Andy’s feet with their belts. Their hands were cuffed behind them. Justin was shaking a little less now. Clark had begun work on the safe deposit boxes. “How’s it going in here?” “Just peachy,” Evan said. He heard Jimmy and Marie talking behind him. He turned back and looked at them. Then from the back room he heard Evan tell Gardner to stand there and not move. His attention flickered briefly, but he kept it on Jimmy and Marie. “So what is that small stack of papers you got tucked under you?” Jimmy asked. From the tone of his voice he sounded genuinely interested. “My son,” Marie told him. “He wrote a short story.” “Where’s your son?” “Back home. In Boston.” “How old is he?” “Sixteen.” “And he wrote a short story?” “Yes.” “You must be proud of him.” “He wants to be a writer,” Marie said. Her tone had changed. Maybe thinking about her son made her realize just how serious her situation was. “Is it any good?” Jimmy asked.


“I haven’t read it yet. I just printed it up. He e-mailed it to me.” “That’s cool your son wants to be a writer. You think he’ll make it?” “If he keeps at it.” “Even given our current situation, Marie, I can tell you’re proud of him.” “I’m proud.” A sniffle. “Very proud.” Dempster let an internal smile stretch across him. He’d never been sure about any of these guys, especially Jimmy. Now he saw what Jimmy was good at. Jimmy looked up at him. “It would be okay to let her read her son’s story, wouldn’t it?” “I don’t want to read it right now,” Marie said. “Why not?” “I don’t want to read it when I’m stuck on the floor with a gun pointed at me and I don’t know what’s going to happen from one moment to the next.” “Nothing’s gonna happen to you, Marie. I promise you.” “I’m really scared.” “I know,” Jimmy told her. “I know you’re scared. But you know what? I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m scared too.” Marie was crying now. “You are?” “Yes. I’m very scared. I don’t like doing this. I don’t like having to stand here holding a gun.” “So why are you doing it?”


“Because there’s no other way for me. Nothing else will work for me. I worked at a Wal-Mart once and couldn’t even handle that. This is the only thing that’ll work.” He let a considerate pause pass by, then said, “If you want, Marie, go on and prop up onto your elbows and read your son’s story. I’m not gonna hurt you. It might make you feel better.” A silence within a silence ensued. Then Marie, whimpering now, said, “Maybe I’ll just read the first sentence.” “Yeah, you go ahead, Marie.” He looked at Dempster. “It’s all right, isn’t it?” “Sure,” Dempster said as he felt something tug in his chest. “Yeah, it’s all right, I guess.” He remembered what Sandra had said as she verbally played out her fantasy for the two of them. How she’d always wanted to try her hand at writing a novel. He watched Marie, tears in her eyes, stumble up to her elbows and slide the papers out from under her. “You just read, Marie,” Jimmy told her. “Just read and pretend we’re not even here.” “Your gun is still going to be on me,” she said. “Don’t think about it. Just read. Read your son’s story.” Marie cried a moment longer. Then she adjusted the pages in front of her, sniffled, wiped her nose, and looked at them. Dempster didn’t know if she was reading or not. He didn’t really care, so long as she stayed calm and kept


out of the way. “How’s it coming?” he called into the back. Clark’s voice was rich with triumph. “Man, this is the jackpot times two!” “Doug, Justin, Andy, you guys doing all right?” When none of them spoke, Evan said, “Answer him.” They all said they were fine. Justin’s voice was weepingly distinct. “I feel really important,” Clark said. “Like these boxes are rubbing off on me, making me valuable.” “Just keep at it,” Dempster told him. He walked out from behind the desk and looked around the lobby. Still no sign of the kid. And no sign of Harold. No sign of anyone. He went to the desk and, over it, told Jimmy, “I’ll stay on this side.” “No worries,” Jimmy said standing near Marie, his gun slack at his side. Dempster walked across the lobby, glancing out the tiny windows set in the front doors. He tugged once at the brim of his baseball cap then looked the other way, deep into the hotel, into the lounge where just last night Sandra had said, “I’m safe with you, aren’t I?” and he had told her she was. It was now dark and empty. “This bag’s getting heavy,” Clark called out. Dempster walked over to the front desk and tried to look into the room but couldn’t see anything. No bell sounded so he didn’t hear the slide of the


door, but he heard the two footsteps and then the sudden stop. He snapped his attention to the sound and saw the kid staring at him. He lifted his gun and told the kid not to move. The kid’s arms jittered and his knees knocked. Then, as the light from the elevator began to narrow, to Dempster’s surprise, the kid seized his opportunity and jumped in just as the door closed. “Shit.” “What was that?” Jimmy asked. “It was the kid.” “Shit. He get away?” “What do you think? Sounds like we’ve got a haul. Let’s get the hell out of here.” “Yeah,” Jimmy said. Then to Marie, “Don’t go anywhere.” He moved to the back room. “All right, guys, it’s time. Let’s go.” “What’s going on?” “The kid. He saw us and got away.” “Just now?” “Yeah.” “We still got about five minutes then.” “Don’t be stupid,” Dempster called over the desk. “Let’s go—now.” Evan’s voice told him, “You go if you want. We’ll catch up.” “Goddammit, we’re not meeting somewhere for lunch. This is—” From above a hard blow struck him in the back and sent him to the floor. Dempster


spun around and instinctively fired once. Harold fell backwards against the stairway, a tiny stream of blood running from his mouth. She hadn’t seen it but she’d heard it, and now all Marie could do was scream. Jimmy raced to the desk and looked over it at the dead man on the stairs. “Holy shit.” “What’s going on?” Clark shouted. “Security guard’s dead,” Jimmy told him, his voice filling with panic. Marie began screaming louder. “Shut that bitch up,” Evan yelled. Jimmy went to her and tried to calm her down. Dempster stared at Harold, no longer moving but his eyes staring back at him. The one person he would have to kill, and it would be the one guard that was never armed. “I didn’t think anyone was going to be killed.” It was Gardner’s voice, and it was hysterical. “No one was supposed to die!” “Shut up,” Evan told him. Clark was now standing in the doorway, still looking into the room, a heavy-looking laundry bag in his hands. “Let’s go!” he shouted at Evan. “Get away from there, Doug,” Evan’s voice warned. “No one was supposed to die!”


A moment later there were gunshots. Two of them. Clark turned away in disgust. “What happened?” Dempster demanded. Jimmy took the bag from Clark, who was now crying. He pulled himself together as best he could, then said, “He shot him. He triggered the silent alarm under the monitors, so he shot him.” “Jesus Christ.” “The cops have already been called,” Jimmy said. “Why did it matter? Let’s just get the hell out of here.” He placed the bag on the desk. Dempster took it. “I need a cigarette,” Clark said. Marie’s screams reduced to loud sobs. Jimmy crouched down and whispered something to her. Possibly words of encouragement, possibly something else. Clark remained in the doorway, his back against the jamb, staring out at the lobby, trying not to look into the room but not leaving either. He looked sick. His face was pale. “All right, let’s get out of here,” Dempster said. Jimmy helped Marie to her feet and out from behind the desk. Clark slumped out of the doorway. When he was halfway across the desk, the two security guards screamed. Everyone froze. A second later there was a loud brekebrekebreke sound


and Clark instinctively raced back to the door. Now one guard was screaming and one was not. The brekebreke sounded again, and Dempster watched Clark yell something that couldn’t be heard over it as he lifted his gun and aimed it into the room. The sound didn’t stop. Instead it accepted the sound of one pistol shot from Clark and punched holes in the wall and around the doorjamb; then Clark was standing in an epileptic fit that evolved into a spastic dance. Finally, he went down, the whole front of his body red and ruined. “Holy mother-fuck!” Jimmy shouted. Marie began screaming again. At the same time, through the tiny windows in the front doors, Dempster caught sight of red and blue flashing lights. He stepped past Harold’s body and up the stairs.

*****

“I’m sorry, Marie. I didn’t think it would come to this.” “It doesn’t have to.” “I’m sorry. I don’t have any choice now.” “Yes you do, you have a choice.” “No I don’t.” As more and more lights flashed and men started up the front steps, Jimmy wrapped his arm around Marie’s throat and held his gun to her. As he


dragged her quickly through the lobby towards the darkened area of the lounge, he saw Evan run across the lobby, machine gun in one hand, pistol in the other, and disappear into the darkness of the Old House restaurant. It looked as though Evan hadn’t seen them. If he had, they probably would have been gunned down. Now the cops were inside. And they could see him. And they had their guns drawn. “Let her go!” they were shouting. “Release your hostage and put down your weapon!” Jimmy kept going, dragging her by the throat. He could hear her tiny gasps for breath, almost as though they were directly in his ear. She struggled and he told her to keep calm, took a quick check to see where he was, and saw that he had almost entered the lounge. They’ll be coming from behind me too, he thought. Any moment they’re gonna be coming up the concourse. He backed into something. It was something solid but not a wall. He moved to his right and got behind it as the entire world spun around him and his gun hand shook so much that he could hardly hold it. Through the glass case with the giant pot he watched the police advance. He crouched lower behind the tiled stone stand, bringing Marie down with him, and fired once into the lobby. Watching the police drop down and scatter was surreal. He fired again then looked back into the lounge and saw, through shadows, the fancy


upscale dining area, the Eldorado Court. If he could cut through there he could get to the kitchen. There had to be an exit out that way. “This will all be over soon, Marie,” he told her. “Just work with me a few minutes longer. We’re gonna cut across into the kitchen. There’s an exit there, I know there is. I’ll let you go as soon as we’re outside, all right? Then this will all be over for you, and you can go back to Boston and see your boy and watch him grow up and become a famous writer.” But Marie didn’t say anything. Marie wasn’t moving. Her body was dead weight under his arm. He let go of her as the realization of what he’d just done sank in. She looked at him with dead eyes for a moment. Then her body dropped out from behind the display stand. Someone said, “Aw, shit.” Someone else said, “All right. He’s killed his hostage.” Jimmy, bordering on hysterical, shaking so much he couldn’t handle it, crouched down and fired again. This time they fired back. He heard the sound of bullets punching the stone wall in front of him. He screamed when the glass case above him shattered and rained down. Shards went into the back of his uniform. Then he heard them coming up the concourse and saw their shadows entering the lounge. They saw him. Their guns were on him. They were telling him to drop his weapon and lay down.


He looked at the splayed dead body of Marie. You’re a murderer, he said to himself. You killed an innocent woman. You killed an innocent woman and there’s nothing left for you, ever again. The cops closed in on him. Jimmy put the barrel of his gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

*****

After Evan sprayed bullets into Clark and raced out across the lobby and into the Old House restaurant—catching the flashing lights from the corner of his eye as he did—he realized his folly, and quickly made his way out of the restaurant and down the hall. He made a left, and saw the other security office with a television on and no one about, and to the right a fluorescent-lit hallway. They had to have seen him. Someone was going to be coming up behind him any second. He went right, down the hall. It made a sharp curve, and when he came out he found himself in the parking garage. The sound of a generator and the emerging sound of sirens roared about him (the first squad cars hadn’t used their sirens, probably as an element of surprise). Several feet to the right was a workstation, with eight dozen keys hanging on eight dozen hooks. Each key had a tag with a number on it that corresponded with the parking space in which the car was parked. He unhooked three keys and


hustled deeper into the garage, trying to find one of the corresponding numbers. Then came the screech of tires. The brightness of headlights and the kaleidoscopic brilliance of red and blue, twirling about with carnival grace. He ran deeper into the garage. He heard car doors opening and closing. Then people were shouting at him as he found a short stairway that led up to a door. Which was locked. He spun on the police and fired the Micro Uzi, shooting up the hood and windshield of the front squad car, then quickly spun back and shot up the lock on the door. As he pulled the door open the police pulled their triggers. Evan felt the hot burning pain as a bullet struck his left shoulder. He slammed the door behind him—which now wouldn’t latch—and ran through the dark room, trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder while at the same time numbness consumed his arm. Scrambling through the darkness, he sought an exit, found one, and entered an ugly cement hallway lined with doors. The feeling in his arm disappeared all together, and the Arcus 94 dropped from his hand and clattered to the floor with a crackling echo. He tried the first door: storage. He tried the next door: locked. The third door opened to a stairway as unattractive as the hallway. Making his way up the first level he heard voices below, out in the hall. He ascended the next level and opened the door to an elegant hallway with loud zigzagged carpet and potted cacti and ugly watercolor paintings and rows and rows of doors with numbers and peepholes on them. He stopped long


enough to regard his shoulder, and saw that it was bloody. He crouched down, removed the cartridge from the Micro Uzi and replaced it with another. From there he made his way down the hall, thinking, collecting himself. He needed to find Dempster. He needed to get the bag and Dempster was the one who had it. At the foyer one of the elevators opened. Without seeing who it was he fired into it, heard somebody scream, saw a body fall out, and ran. A stern voice at his back demanded that he stop. He kept running, aimed the Micro Uzi behind him under his limp arm and when he pulled the trigger the gun rattled out of his hand and the surprise caused him to trip over his own feet. He landed hard but didn’t waste a second. By the time the cop came out of cover the machine gun was back in his hand. He fired, hit right on target, and as the man went down the door from which he’d entered opened up. No one was coming out of their rooms, not that he expected them to. Getting to his feet there was a gunshot. It punched into his left thigh and he dropped again, though the pain was almost non-existent. He fired down the hall and watched the little fuckers race for cover, back into the stairway. Using the nearest door handle, he got to his feet, putting his weight on his right leg. He limped back a step and shot out the lock. Someone inside the room screamed. He grabbed the handle, but the door wouldn’t open. Down the hall it began to fill with pigs. He cranked the handle again and put his weight against the door and pushed as hard as he could.


The door popped open. To a chain. He glanced through the four-inch gap into the room and saw a couple huddled on the bed. Then he heard a series of gunshots and saw his blood spatter onto the door and wall. The woman screamed again.

*****

When Dempster got to the top of the stairs he crossed the computer area, went straight to the gray metal door, punched 3114 into the little keypad, heard something within the door disengage, then cranked the handle and stepped inside. It was dark. Several different humming sounds resonated around him. He was in a hallway, or more accurately, he was in a small maze, with metal pipes and large machines making up the intricate, winding passages. With a click the door closed behind him. The room was warm and mildly humid, and in the faint light everything looked like dry mechanical swampland. He walked down the short hall, past gauges and regulators and nozzles and valves, past the maintenance office, and came to a windowed door on his left. Through the window was a small lounge, not elegant like the hotel—more the sort of lounge one would find in a factory, with plastic chairs and a cafeteria table and a small kitchenette. Bars of streetlight cut in through the window blinds. He opened the door, which thankfully wasn’t locked, and with the barrel


of his .45 pushed down the blinds and looked to the street. He saw the police lights bouncing off the buildings and the tail end of a squad car far to the right. At least so far, this side of the hotel was unwatched. Good. He crossed over to the next door, eased it open and found a small office, empty at this hour. There were two doors in here, one to the left and one straight ahead. The one to the left had a narrow vertical window that looked out into what appeared to be the guest part of the hotel. He went for the door straight ahead of him. It opened to a stairway with a second door, presumably the one for guests. As he climbed the first flight he heard a series of voices on the other side of the door. He quickly raced up the next flight, aware of how heavy the bag was becoming, and when he didn’t hear anything on the other side, decided he had to chance it. Below he heard gunshots. The hallway he entered was quiet. He took a moment to visualize where he was. Once fairly certain he understood, he continued, past guestrooms, past a small humming concession area, and he wondered what the hell had gotten into Evan. He put his gun away and switched the bag to his right hand. I should’ve known that fucker would go psycho. He walked casually. Fuck-ups. All of them were fuck-ups. He thought about Harold. He saw Harold standing in the lounge telling


him what time it was and then Harold was dead on the stairs and blood dripped from his mouth and his dead eyes were looking at him. He wondered if Marie had been telling the truth when she initially said there were others up in the computer room. Several people were standing around in the foyer. They looked at him. They saw that he was a janitor. “Hey, buddy, what’s going on?” a middle-aged man with a southern accent asked. His wife nudged him and said softly, “Honey, he doesn’t know anything, he’s just a janitor.” Dempster moved on. If the cameras weren’t back on yet they would be any second. He turned the next corner. Underneath came a chaotic spree of gunfire. It was loud enough to be frightening if you didn’t already know it was probably going to happen. Behind him, back in the foyer, a woman with a panicky voice said, “I think we should go back to our room.” Then all of a sudden he stopped. The kid was running towards him, looking behind himself, unaware of what he was headed for. He turned back just in time to keep from colliding with the very thing he was trying to keep away from. Dempster grabbed him by the tie. The kid’s eyes widened to coasters, his jaw dropped, and before he knew what was going on he was on his back,


unconscious. Dempster, with effort, dragged the kid through the hall, made the last left and entered a set of double doors as he heard the bell of the elevator down the hall. Inside the doors the service elevator, for employees only, stood at his right. To his left were two laundry carts, one filled halfway with dirty sheets, the other one empty. He put the kid into the empty cart, then stripped out of his janitor’s uniform, under which he had on his dark blue blazer and pants and a white shirt open at the collar. He buttoned the collar and from his jacket pocket withdrew a blue and gold striped tie. He removed his glasses and baseball cap, took off the mustache, bundled them with the uniform and stuffed everything into the bottom of the half-filled laundry cart. When he emerged from the room the only thing causing him to stand out was the bag. People were coming out of their rooms now. A door opened beside him and a young couple stepped out wearing pajamas. They pulled the door closed behind them, which didn’t shut all the way. Without noticing, they walked down the hall to see what was going on. Dempster pushed the door open and stepped inside. Clothes were strewn everywhere, mostly the woman’s. He strode to the closet, opened it, found a few pieces of clothing on hangars and two suitcases, one a girly looking thing with pink and red hearts on it, the other a black wheeled leather bag with a retractable handle. He took it out of the closet,


removed the few items within, then stuffed the laundry bag into it and zipped it up. He exited the room. Nobody gave him a glance. “Everybody, please,” a cop was saying. “Get back in your rooms.” “What’s going on?” someone asked. “Nothing at this time,” the officer said, almost disappointed, “but please go back to your rooms.” Dempster walked briskly past the foyer. He continued down the hall and when the stairway came into view it was blocked by a police officer with a rifle, explaining to a number of people that they needed to go back an lock themselves in. He took a couple more steps and glanced into an open door. From what he could tell, the room was empty. The cop with the rifle looked at him. Dempster stepped into the room and closed the door. It was a fairly small room that smelled like talcum powder, with a large messy bed and a hutch with a TV in it. The TV was switched on to CNN. Beside the hutch was a set of French doors. He opened them and found an extremely small stuccoenclosed balcony with a tiny table and chair and nothing else. From above, the layout of the hotel looked very different. It was multi-leveled, a one-story drop here, a two- or three-story drop there. Above him the building climbed higher. He was mostly at the side of the building but when he looked down, he saw that the balcony was two stories above the roof of the first floor. Fifteen or so


feet below and eight or so feet away, there was another roof. Someone knocked at the door. It was a hard and insistent knock. “Just a minute,” he said. The knock came again, and a voice said, “Police. Open up.” Dempster hefted the suitcase and threw it. It landed on the lower roof and bounced twice. He closed the French doors behind him, climbed up onto the uneven surface of the wall as the cop got the door open. He jumped, and when he landed he came down hard, rolled and then sprawled out on his back. All the pain he had built up in his body attacked him at once. It was an unbearable pain. His arm came to his face and covered his eyes. He wanted to go to sleep. All he wanted was to sleep. Then he thought he was sleeping. Then a voice woke him up. His arm came away from his face and he opened his eyes. He sat up, blinking. He saw the night sky, the stars twinkling. He saw the police officer on the balcony, rifle aimed. A distant metallic voice muttered out of a walkie-talkie. Dempster rolled and the man fired. A small but deep chunk of roof disappeared. Withdrawing his .45 the two of them fired simultaneously. As Dempster felt the bullet graze his left side he saw the rifle drop from the balcony and saw the man drop into the room. Then the man was up again, first falling forward, then falling back. Then he positioned himself and aimed a pistol. Dempster shot again and the man went down again. This time he didn’t


get up. Laboring to his feet, Dempster rose just as another person came onto the balcony. Then the doors opened up on the next balcony and someone was there too. He picked up the bag and ran, relying on streetlights and the moon to show him the way. The pain in his left side began to burn. Then came the sound of gunfire. Single shots, here and there. He looked ahead and saw that the end of this roof was connected to the third story, and he stopped before he smashed into a window. A bullet punched the stucco above his head. To his left, a narrow wall extended out into space about five feet, then dropped down and down again, like long, precarious, paper-wide steps. They continued out past the roof of the bottom-floor and just ended in mid-air, above the sidewalk. The drop from this level to the next was farther than the previous one. He couldn’t risk jumping. Too much chance he’d break something. He fired at the balcony on the right and heard the sound of breaking glass. With the suitcase in his right hand and his gun in his left he stepped up onto the wall. Another gunshot. The bullet whizzed by his head and he teetered as his eyes took in the sight of the long fall. He caught himself, and made it to the edge. The step was further down than he’d thought. Crouching, he set the bag on the wall, hopped and turned around over it, landed on the next step. He lost his footing but managed to hold onto either side of the suitcase, which


acted as a hook over the higher wall. The .45 dangled from his ring finger. More gunshots. He couldn’t fight back now, just had to get out of there. He got his footing and moved as quickly as he could to the next step, then to the next. One at a time, he told himself, just take it one at a time. More bullets slammed the wall and whizzed by him. He was almost at the edge. He tossed the suitcase to the sidewalk. Then he was at the edge. He lowered himself as far as he could for the drop. From above he heard a window shatter. He saw someone come out onto the roof from where he’d started this crazy climb. He heard the gunshot as he fell through the air. Then he landed hard and fiery pain crackled up through his feet and legs and for a moment everything went black. The streetlights faded. The moon was blind. The darkness seemed to last forever. Then he opened his eyes and hadn’t even settled onto the sidewalk yet. Aching, scrambling up, he hefted the suitcase and ran with a semi-limp as fast as he could towards the County Clerk’s Office, hoping Evan had really parked there and hoping even moreso that the police hadn’t yet blocked the area. Not more than ten minutes had gone by since he saw the flashing lights from the lobby. There was one gunshot, and then everything went quiet behind him. The Pontiac was there. It was also locked. He smashed the driver’s side window with the butt of his gun, unlocked the front door and got under the


wheel, telling himself “Yellow to red, yellow to red.” “Hey,” he heard somebody say from somewhere high above. “Someone’s stealing that car.” Then came the sound of sirens once more, unrelated to what the voices had just said, but still related to him. The Pontiac started. Dempster put it in reverse, backed it around in a half circle, switched to drive and drove as fast as he could in the opposite direction of the original escape route. He drove for a very long time and very out-of-the-way to get where he needed to go, and made a serious habit out of checking the rearview mirror. He lifted the left side of his jacket at one point and saw there was blood on his shirt.


Chapter Sixteen

Sandra was staring out the front window of the bar when he pulled in. Rather than park in a space, Dempster stopped the car out front and waved at her. She couldn’t see him through the tint of the Pontiac’s windows, though. He hadn’t smashed any of the windows on the passenger side, which faced the bar. Leaving the car running, he opened the door and stepped out. When she saw him her eyes lit up. He climbed into the passenger side and waited for her to take care of whatever she needed to in the bar. Two minutes later she came out, saw he wasn’t behind the wheel, beetled her brow, and got into the driver’s seat. “What happened?” she asked, and saw his hand at his side. “You gotta drive,” he told her. “Touch as little of the car as possible.”


She looked down at the instrument panel, confused because the car was running. “Where’s the key?” “Just drive. Go to the McDonald’s and we’ll get our stuff. Then we gotta go back to the mall and get your car.” “Why?” “Can’t keep driving this thing. It’s hotter than hell.” “Hopefully my car’s still there.” “It’s still there, don’t worry.” She put the Pontiac in drive. “You’re bleeding.” “Only a little. Just got nicked by a bullet, ripped some flesh. No big deal.” “Are you okay?” “Just drive.” “There’s broken glass in here.” “So be careful.” “Whose car is this? Why don’t you have your car?” “Things didn’t go quite as planned.” “That much I’ve figured out,” she said, and got onto Cerrillos Road. “It’s the exact reason I didn’t want to keep our stuff in the Civic,” he said. “They’re probably stripping the thing apart right now.” “Your fingerprints will be in there. My fingerprints will be in there.” “I wiped it down, the whole thing. It’s taken care of. When we get to the


mall we’ll wipe this one down too.” “You might have missed a couple places.” “I might have,” he said, “but I don’t think so. Just keep track of what you touch in here.” Sandra looked cautiously around herself, then leaned low over the steering wheel and brought the car to fifty. “Slow down,” he told her. She threw him a glare, then eased up on the pedal and their speed slackened to forty, five miles over the limit. She said, “Did you get anything at all, or was it a complete bust?” “I got it all,” he told her, and closed his eyes. “I got it all.” He saw Harold falling into the stairway. He heard the security guards scream, heard the brekebrekebreke of a fucking machine gun. He saw the front of Clark’s body being ripped apart. He heard Freddy tell him, “Please try not to kill anybody…it’s gonna be a big deal, we don’t wanna make it any bigger.” The car slowed and made a turn. Opening his eyes he saw McDonald’s. Sandra pulled the car around to the back, near the dumpster, and stopped. “I don’t know how to shut the car off.” “Don’t,” he told her. “Just kill the lights.” They got out, found their stuff behind a box wedged between the rear of the dumpster and the building, right where they’d stashed it. They put everything into the back seat with the suitcase. When Sandra saw the suitcase


her eyes lit up, though not the way they did when she saw him at the bar. Rather it was as though she’d just been slapped in the face once more with reality, and she stared at the bag, frozen, transfixed. “Let’s go,” he said, and climbed back into the car. He waited patiently, knew she was debating with herself. Everything had been so romantic to her, getting together with a real life criminal, the idea of living on the run, traveling all over the world. Even seeing him bleed heightened the romantic drama in her eyes; but seeing the suitcase there in the back seat brought home what it was all about, much like when she’d gotten mad at him at the hotel. So much, and in the end, it wasn’t about anything important at all. “Are you coming?” She stood outside the car a couple seconds longer, then got in the driver’s seat and closed the door. She slouched, facing the wheel, her eyes directed to the side and back, either at him or at the presence of the suitcase. He didn’t know which. Finally she said two words: “Stop it.” He didn’t say anything, just waited out the silence. She brought her face up and looked at him. “Do you love me, Jack?” He thought this might happen. He didn’t think it would happen now. “Yeah.” “Do you love me so much that nothing else in the world matters?” He looked into her beautiful brown eyes. “Yes.”


“Then stop it,” she said. “Don’t do this anymore.” “I don’t want to do it anymore,” he told her. “I’m done.” He allowed her to check his eyes and see that he was sincere. “Let’s go switch cars,” he said. She started to say something, held it back, then turned on the headlights and put the car in drive. There was no talk between them. They didn’t look at each other until they pulled up beside the Nissan in the parking lot of the mall five minutes later. They made the transfer of personal belongings and stolen goods from car to car, then Dempster spent some time wiping down the interior of the Pontiac, making sure to get everything Sandra had touched. He didn’t know what time it was but the stars were fading just the slightest bit. Another hour or so and the sun would be coming up. He got out of the car, thought about taking Evan’s, Clark’s, and Jimmy’s stuff out of the trunk, then decided against it. There wouldn’t be anything in there to tie him in with them. The only people at the hotel that got a clear look at him were now dead. He was free to go. Sandra was sitting on the hood of the Nissan, looking at him. When he approached, she reached out and took his hands. She drew him close, then their lips were kissing, soft and tender, and when they parted she smiled, and her eyes glistened with held-back tears. They got into the car. “Where am I going?”


“Get on the Interstate and go south,” he told her. He watched the buildings dwindle in numbers as they made their way out of town. He felt the heaviness of his eyelids. He yawned. “In about forty minutes look for Exit 242, Rio Rancho and Placitas. Get off there and make a right, then wake me up.” “You going to sleep?” “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I’ll just stare out the window, think about a little cottage in Maine.” She smiled. She wiped tears from her eyes. “We’ll work as grocery baggers,” she said. “Or maybe I’ll work in a greenhouse.” “We’ll spend our nights reading to each other.” “We’ll drink wine and make love,” she said. Her tone was lighter now, more like the girl he’d first met. It comforted him and he needed that comfort very much right now. “You can cut up all the sheets,” he said, “and you can draw on the walls as much as you want. You don’t even have to draw hieroglyphs.” His mind faded out, faded back in. “You can use finger-paints, you want…” “And you’ll make me tea while I do.” He felt his lips shape a smile. “You can write your novel,” he told her. Then he yawned again, and slumped further into his seat and closed his eyes. “Sleep gently,” she told him.


Chapter Seventeen

“My father used to pick blackberries out here,” Jack said. “Told me when he was a kid a lot of this land was an apple orchard, loaded with apples and blackberries and other things.” “That’s all gone now, I guess.” “Yeah, I wonder what happened.” They walked hand in hand amidst oaks, poplars, and maples. The setting sun cut between the leaves and branches in fragmented patterns, broken visuals like a partially completed jigsaw puzzle, half vibrant, half shadow, the light wind playing tricks on the eyes when it fluttered everything about. “He and his brother used to spend hours out here playing hide-and-seek


and war games and stuff,” he said as they made their way up the lush, forested trail. “That’s cute,” Shelley said as a gray rabbit hopped up and stopped a couple of yards in front of them, its nose rhythmically bobbing up and down like clockwork. They took a cautious step forward, and the rabbit hopped away. “I’ve never been hiking here,” Shelley said. “It’s beautiful.” “My dad used to take me fishing on the lake,” he told her. “And sometimes we’d go fishing in a pond not too far from here, over that way.” He pointed. “Mostly we caught bass, but sometimes a good bluegill or pike would come up. People say there’s catfish. I never saw one, though.” The trail veered to the left and sloped down. Deep grooves showed where rain had made paths for itself. A woodchuck zipped across the path and vanished as a hawk circled the sky overhead, and in the far distance ducks quacked. They passed under a large low-hanging branch. When they came out the other side tension suddenly clogged the air. “So why are we up here?” Jack gave her an expression of uncertainty, then looked down to the grooves in the trail. He kicked at a stone. “I dunno. I guess I thought that maybe we could talk.” “If there’s anything to talk about,” Shelley said with a voice that


quavered. Jack asked her if she’d told her parents. She shook her head. “No, not yet. I don’t really know how to tell them. What about you?” “No. I don’t know what to say either.” “What about Mike?” “What about Mike?” “He won’t even talk to me.” “Can you blame him?” “He should at least talk to me. He’s a part of this too.” “Do you know how this is gonna look, Shelley?” His own voice was strained and trembling. “Not only are you sixteen, but you don’t even know who the real father is.” “I don’t care how it looks, and I think it happened for a reason. And no…no, I could never live with myself if I got rid of it.” “You have to get rid of it, Shelley.” “No, I don’t.” “Yes, you do. Think about it. Think about the kind of life the child will have. Think about what it’s gonna do to your life. What it’s going to do to all of us, especially the baby’s.” “I will love my baby with all my heart,” she said. “That’s not entirely the point. Even if you love it with all your heart, how


are you gonna provide for it? Do you think your parents will help you?” “You guys will help me. We’ll all get jobs and care for the baby together. I’ll see if I can have my summer job at the Dairy Queen full-time.” “But one of us is innocent, Shelley. You can’t bring us both in on something like this when only one of us is responsible.” “You both had your choice that night. You both took the responsibility then. You shouldn’t have put it in me if you didn’t know or like the consequences.” To the left was a patch of wildflowers, mostly blazing stars. Jack stopped and studied them, allowed their beauty to fill him, then closed his eyes and spoke. “You’re right,” he told her. “You’re right, we should have known what might happen going in.” He paused again, then said, “But I need to tell you something else.” “What?” “It’s hard for me to say.” “Has everything else been easy to say?” He picked up and moved a fallen branch from the trail. He couldn’t look directly at her, even though he really wanted to. “Even before that night,” he said, “I had a crush on you. And since that night, I’ve fallen in love with you, I think. I mean, I have. At school, when you take my hand, or when you hug me, when we’re walking together, I feel like the greatest man in the whole world. I think about you all the time, and I think about you and me developing


something. And then I see you with Mike, and you act the same way towards him. It drives me crazy.” Her voice was taut when she said, “You love me?” Tears suddenly filled his eyes. He held them back, nodded, and the fog of tension thickened around them. “Jack,” she said, “I don’t think any of us will ever be able to be happy with this situation. I know that. The way I feel about both of you, well, it was one thing…but now it’s something else. I don’t see you and me ever being truly happy together. And I don’t see that for me and Mike either. But I think we all have an obligation now, and I think we need to stick together, even if hearts are broken.” She touched his chin and made him look at her. “I can’t give this baby up, Jack. There’s a part of me that wishes I could, but I can’t.” Jack looked at her a moment longer, and in that moment he hated himself more than he had ever hated anyone in his life. He wanted to grab her, hold her tight and never let go. He wanted to kiss her on the lips and whisper “I love you” and hear her say the same words back at him. Instead he looked down to the path, and as a squirrel scaled a tree the two of them began walking again. He felt nauseous. He felt angry. He felt completely out of his mind but he managed to hold the conversation at the right level, and asked her if she’d thought about names. “If it’s a boy, Benjamin. If it’s a girl, Kelly.”


“And what last name is Benjamin or Kelly gonna have?” They veered left onto a secondary trail. The sky was growing gray. “I was thinking we could hyphenate all three.” The pond came into view. There were ducks on the pond. “That’ll be a mouthful.” They reached the pond. It was surrounded by limestone and lush vegetation. The wind was gone now and everything was quiet until a duck quacked. Jack looked at the duck, then looked at Shelley, then looked beyond Shelley and saw a shadow move amidst the foliage. “Some people say a duck’s quack doesn’t echo,” he told her, and saw the shadow move again. “What?” “Yeah, but it’s not true.” Jack watched the shadow emerge from the foliage, a large rock in its hands. “Yeah, I guess high frequency sounds bounce better and create stronger echoes. Ducks just have quacks without much high frequency, and as a result their echoes are very faint.” “Oh,” Shelley said. Jack looked at her, wanted to tell her again that he loved her and he didn’t know what to do without her. He wanted to tell her to reconsider, get rid of the baby and let’s try again. We’ll have a baby someday, down the road, when we’re ready. He wanted to tell her that she had just taken something


very important and special away from him and it was something he could never find in the same way again but in spite of that fact he still loved her and wanted to be with her and if things could only be just a little bit different then maybe it could have all come true but minds were made up and things were to be done in a very certain way now and that’s all there was to it and that’s when the rock hit her on the back of the head.

*****

Dempster snapped awake and heard a scream. “God,” Sandra said. “You scared me.” He blinked several times and finally remembered where he was. They were still on Interstate 25, headed south. “What did I do?” he asked. “You all of a sudden just thrashed about. I thought you were going to attack me.” “Sorry, just a bad dream.” They drove for a moment in silence, the Nissan moving at a steady seventy. The sky had lightened from blackness to lackluster and seemed to keep brightening before his eyes. There was still no sun, yet there was no moon that he could see. Clouds had moved in and were spreading about, adding melancholy hues to everything.


Then came the sign:

EXIT 242 RIO RANCHO AND PLACITAS 1 ½ Miles

“That’s where you wanna make a right,” he said. “I know, I’m not stupid,” she told him. He didn’t look at her, just stared straight ahead, looking for the exit. Then, “What do you have to do here, anyway?” “I have to get rid of that suitcase.” She nodded, but it was clear she didn’t quite understand. “I take it to these guys here,” he explained. “They give me my cut and work out the rest themselves, and we all go about our merry way.” “So you work for somebody,” she said matter-of-factly. “Everyone works for somebody,” he said. The exit came into view. Sandra drove the car onto the steep ramp and the speedometer dropped until it hit rock bottom and they halted at a stop sign. She checked for traffic, then turned right. It was still too early for traffic. There was hardly any at all. No residences of any kind around this part, chain restaurants and gas stations dominated the strip of road, giving it the look and feel of every other run-of-the-mill town in America.


“In a little while you’re gonna see a casino on your right,” he told her. “Right after that is a streetlight and there should be a sign that indicates the way to Corrales. Make a left there.” “All right,” she said. Then she sighed, and her lips developed a tiny sideof-the-mouth smile. “What?” he asked. “I was just thinking how you said everyone works for somebody,” she told him. “I wonder what my parents would think if they ever found out what I was doing right now.” “What about your aunt and uncle?” “Yeah, them too.” She looked at him, then back to the road. “Do you realize it’s only been something like a week since we first met in Oklahoma?” “Something like that, yeah. I finished your Goethe quote for you.” “You also told me not to be disappointed if I discovered I wasn’t a genius.” This made her laugh. He couldn’t tell if it was genuine or covering up fear, but it was a pleasant sound. He gave her a moment, then, “Have you discovered something?” he asked her. “I’ve discovered that I’m not a genius,” she said. “Have you?” “Or maybe I just don’t care to try. I was never interested in being a genius. Like I told you that day, I’m interested in love and romance, life and


death.” “There’s been plenty of each,” he said. “Maybe I just want to live my life, spend my days with you and not really give a damn about anything other than being happy and living life the way I want to live it.” “I think that’s genius right there,” he told her. “Life’s gonna kill you,” she said, “so we might as well enjoy it while we can.” They came to the casino. At the next light there was a sign for Corrales. She turned left. There was a lot of undeveloped land, and what was developed was residential. The road curved to the left then curved to the right and then straightened out. “Your soul still intact?” he asked her. “It is,” she said. “I can feel it firmly attached to me.” “Good.” “How’s your side?” “It aches, nothing more.” “You didn’t lose your soul when you got hit? I mean, it didn’t leak out or anything?” “No, I don’t think so.” “Good.” She nodded to herself. Then, “Do you think we maybe should have stopped and gotten a paper?”


“What for?” “To see if there’s anything about… whatever you did?” “There wasn’t enough time to put it in this morning’s paper. I’ll bet it’s been on the radio and TV by now, though. It’ll come out in the paper tomorrow, I’m sure, but it doesn’t matter. We’ll be in Indiana or Ohio or somewhere by then.” “On our way to Maine?” “Or Maryland, or wherever. Slow down.” She eased off the pedal and touched the brakes. Dempster saw the street he was looking for. “Make a left here.” The road was windy, curved this way and that like riding on the back of a riled snake. The houses were small and huddled together. One house on the left had Christmas lights on—presumably they were on year-round—and several of the traffic signs flanking the street were handmade. “Look for a street to the right called Sunny Day,” he told her. “We take that for about five or so miles and we’re there.” The small village was so quiet, so empty and lifeless at this hour. If not for the occasional porch light and the sporadic dog in the yard, it might as well have been a nicely kept ghost town. The road curved right, and as it did, Sunny Day appeared on the right. Sandra hit the brakes and cut the wheel as tight as she could. They turned onto a narrow road that quickly transformed from blacktop to dirt. The road climbed up, then down, with sharp curves and


low-hanging branches. It was minimal road at best for a while, dark and downtrodden, contrasting its name with superb finesse. It was a bumpy road, too. Sandra drove it at about fifteen miles an hour, creating giant clouds of dust behind them. Then, abruptly, the road opened up and gave way to blacktop again. It widened, straightened. A road dead-ended into this one on the right, and Sandra brought the car up to thirty-five. “Interesting road,” Dempster said. “Very. Did you notice that there were a couple of small houses when we first turned onto the road and there hasn’t been anything since until now?” True enough, houses were sprouting up here and there again, each one on what looked like several acres of land. They were nice houses too, if not a little basic in their New Mexican style architecture. “We’re supposed to just drive on this road until it ends,” Dempster said. “Then what?” “We probably spend about an hour or so chatting it up and working everything out, then we take off.” “Sounds like a blast.” “Doesn’t sound like anything to me.” After another five minutes the houses disappeared again. The road narrowed and went back to dirt, though it wasn’t as ominous and gloomy as it had been in the beginning. Tiny private roads without names ran off both


sides from time to time, stretching so far away that neither Dempster nor Sandra could see the homes they connected to. Then the road made a sharp right around a high hill, then a left around another, and when they straightened out they saw a handmade sign stating that they were entering private property and to turn back. Then everything opened up to a clearing, a very large clearing and in the center was a nice house, surrounded by an adobe wall. It was not dissimilar to the houses just a mile or so back behind them. They entered the clearing and Sandra brought the car to a crawl and steered towards the house. Out front there were two cars, an obviously rented Mercedes-Benz, and a newer model Ford truck. “Sure likes living out in the middle of nowhere, huh?” “Park the car.” Sandra brought the Nissan to the left of the Mercedes, pulled up on the handbrake, then switched off the engine. Dempster reached for the door handle then stopped and turned to her. “I dunno if it’s better that you come in, or if you wait here.” She didn’t reply, just looked at him, her eyes gleaming. Her face was so beautiful, like the dawn around them. Nature had pieced this woman into such a gentle beauty. The sight of her made his heart ache. Then tears stood in her eyes and she leaned forward and kissed him. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said, and feigned a smile. It was very difficult to get out of the car.


“Go on,” she said. Her smile became more genuine. “Go on and get it over with.” He kissed her. “I love you,” he said, and as he said it he was getting out of the car, and then he was closing the door, and then he was standing there, looking at the house. He opened the back door and took out the suitcase, then closed the door and looked back at the house again. Everything was motionless. Everything was quiet. The house seemed very far away, even as he moved up the stone steps, opened the hand-carved gate and entered the courtyard. His feet were a mile down as he crossed the flagstone path. The sound the doorbell made when he rang it was a faint, distant blur to his ears. He turned around and looked out at the light forest of rolling hills and saw that the sun was still not quite ready to come up. It’s very beautiful, he said to himself. Then he turned back to the door and knocked. He rang the doorbell again. And waited. No one answered the door. They knew he was coming; yet no one answered the door. He reached down and turned the handle. There was a click, the door gave, and he pushed it open. He stepped inside. It was dark. All the lights were off. It was even quieter inside than it had been outside. The ceilings were high, with vigas stretched across them. The room was quite large, with pseudo-rustic oddball furniture strategically placed about here and there, as


though compensating with aesthetics for the fact that comfort couldn’t be found. Everything in the place wore a shroud of shadow. He called out and no one answered. He looked across the living room, where the house opened up to a custom kitchen with a stove and a nook on its right, and to the left what looked like another large room. Directly in front of him as he crossed the living room was a large window over the sink, looking out to the forest. It really is very beautiful, he said to himself; and as he drew closer he saw a black car out there. A dark, menacing car and it was empty and all of a sudden he tensed. Get out of here, he said to himself. Get out of here right now. Get out of this house. To his left he heard a single footstep. When he looked he saw a man standing in the hallway on the other side of the room. In the room, by a window looking out over the rolling hills, was a gruesome pile of bleeding bodies. As the man raised his gun the front door opened and Sandra stepped in saying there was another car parked out back and she got a really bad feeling about it and what was it all about. When the door closed Dempster dropped down behind the kitchen counter and the man fired his gun and a ceramic pot exploded. Sandra screamed and then there were more gunshots. Dempster reached under his jacket and withdrew his .45, rounded the counter and fired into the hallway. He watched the man retreat into a room on


the right. At the same time Sandra was racing towards him. “Get out of here,” he told her. “What the fuck are you doing?” But she was now too close to him, and just as she got behind the counter the man entered the hallway again, this time with a pistol in each hand. Dempster shoved Sandra down to the floor and told her to stay there just as double gunfire shot up the kitchen wall behind them and the counter in front of them. When it ceased, Dempster drew a breath, then swung around the counter and squeezed off three rounds. He heard an “Ack!” and then a clomp, like something hitting the floor. He chanced a look and saw the man was still there, leaning against the wall, his left arm crippled, one gun at his feet. Dempster fired again, and so did the man, and in the hallway behind the man, Dempster saw another man race out of a room on the left and run deeper into the hall, ducking to the right where the hall made an L. Kolata and Campion. They’d figured it out. He didn’t know how but they’d figured it out. They’d fucking figured it out. Dempster pulled the trigger twice more and the second time he got a click. He quickly spun back behind the counter. The kettle on the stove across the way jumped into the air and clattered to the floor with a hole in it. He leaned against the cabinets, exchanged gun clips, and looked at Sandra. She was frowning, blinking at him. Then her frown deepened and her eyes asked questions.


Not right now, he thought. I’ll tell you all about it later. He spun back and fired three rapid shots. The man’s gun flew flippantly from his hand like he didn’t care anymore, and his body squirmed and writhed, and then dropped to the floor, where it twitched a couple of times before it was still. Everything was dead quiet again. Dempster slowly took a step into the room, gun up and ready. A fast glance at the bodies by the window showed him Freddy Skeele and Charlie Powers under dawn’s early light. He knew the other man was Frazier. He didn’t know which of the two he had just killed. Suddenly he was very cold. And tired. All of a sudden he was so tired he didn’t know how he was able to keep his eyes open. He shivered. The chill hacked away at him, bit into him with vicious teeth. Shrug it off, he told himself, and took another step into the room. When he did there were abrupt footsteps and the second man emerged in the hallway, double-gunned like the first. Dempster jumped to the right and landed right next to the bodies as gunfire crack-crack-cracked from the darkness of the hallway like loud popping corn. Then he heard a snicker and the footsteps retreated. “Stay down,” Dempster shouted to Sandra, and leapt over the first man’s corpse, into the hall. He looked in the door on the right. It was a den. The door on the left was a guestroom. There was also a bathroom on the left, right at the corner, in line with the turn of the hallway, which he peeked around. No sign of the man, just more doorways. He crept around the corner,


and step by cautious step made his way down the hall. Past the first door, past the second door, and at the third door the second door swung open, and Dempster whirled around just in time to knock both guns out of the way. Two holes punched into the lower part of the wall. With his gun, Dempster backhanded the man, catching him on his jaw, while at the same time the man’s right gun aimed up at Dempster’s belly. He brought his gun hand down quick again, and the pistol snapped out of the man’s hand and bounced practically to the bathroom, leaving him with one. Then the man backhanded Dempster and caught him on the cheek, sending him back against the wall. On impact Dempster kicked out, hit the man’s other gun but only jostled his arm around. He brought both hands down and seized the man’s wrist, his own gun dropping out of his hand. He twisted the wrist this way and that, then the man’s right fist hammered him between the eyes. Everything brightened like a camera flash, then darkened with shades of death. But still he held the wrist, and he twisted it harder and harder until the man let out a wail and something inside the wrist popped. The second his fingers let go of the gun Dempster slid it away. Then he took a right to the face and his head snapped back and blood pooled up in his mouth. Another right smashed against his cheekbone. Still holding the wrist, Dempster twisted it as hard as he could. The man let out a scream and Dempster let go and reached for his gun. Before he got it another blow cracked against his left temple, sending him against the wall. They were


both crouched and the man threw another right, then another, hitting him on the cheek, then on the jaw. You deserve this, you know, a voice inside his head told him as another shot caught him in the eye. You deserve every bit of this. Every fucking bit. His head was filled with pain. All he could see for a time was black streaked with crimson. Then he saw a sixteen-year-old girl on her knees by a pond and there was blood running down her neck and she was crying. Then everything went fiery red and he swung his arm out blind. It connected. His fist hit something soft and protruding, and when he opened his eyes his hand was covered in blood and the man’s nose was broken. He reached for his gun, picked it up but before he had a good hold it was smacked away and it flew all the way down the hall and into the bathroom, where it cracked against the toilet then clacked to the tile floor. The man leaped at him and crashed his head into Dempster’s jaw. Dempster felt a tooth loosen. He fell back against the wall but forced himself to shrug it off and reached for the man’s throat. As he did the man leaped at him again, and this time Dempster didn’t hit the wall. He fell through the doorway and landed on his back, the man on top of him. He felt another right bash him, then another. Dempster spread his fingers out and jabbed up, first hitting the man’s broken nose, the second time hitting him square in the eye. The man screamed and Dempster rolled him over. For the first time, through a painful haze, he saw where he was. He was


in another guestroom. A guestroom with a desk. Sitting on the desk were a computer, a packaged ream of paper, a couple of pens, and a letter holder with a few envelopes stuffed into it and a letter opener. He stepped to the desk and went for the letter opener but was caught around the ankle and his ankle was yanked. His hand hit the letter holder and everything in it went flying off the desk. His left side hit hard against the desk’s corner and he let out a yelp as the man held onto his pants leg and scrambled towards him. Dempster reached for a pen. When he got one his chaotic movements sent the others rolling of the desk. He brought it up above his head and swung it down, planting it deep into the man’s back, right inside of his left shoulder blade. The man didn’t yell. He let go of his pants leg but kept coming, and got up to one knee. Dempster reached behind him, at a loss, and grabbed the computer keyboard. He smashed it over the man’s head. Then hit him again and the keyboard snapped and fell to the side, cord ripping out. The man swayed but stayed up. He looked at Dempster, eyes rolling, and smiled. “You must be Dempster,” he said, his voice clogged and watery. Dempster grabbed the ream of paper and swung it like a baseball bat. It caught the man on the left and he went down onto his right side. When he tried to get up Dempster hit him again, then again and again and again as the packaging tore open and blood began spattering. He kept hitting him, over and over, each time in the head as hard as he could, until sheets of loose-leaf paper


started sailing into the air and drifting down like giant confetti. When the man was no longer moving Dempster let the remaining paper drop from his hands. He looked at the man’s bloody skull, then dropped to the floor, where he sat for a moment before collapsing onto his back. He stared upward. There was a ceiling fan above him. It wasn’t spinning but he watched it turn, clockwise then counterclockwise. Clockwise then counterclockwise, like being drunk and never knowing which way to let things twirl. Pain consumed him like a blanket of fire and, for a while, he just stayed where he was. I’m done, he said to himself. Finished. Finito. Terminado. Fini. It’s just not worth it. I was sincere, Sandra. I was sincere when I said I was through. Wow, man, what a rumble. What a fucking headache. What a fucking nightmare. Jesus Christ, there’s gotta be a better way to make a living. There’s gotta be a thousand better ways. There’s gotta be a million better ways to make a living and you’re gonna find one now, right? That’s right. Anything’s better than this, my friend. Working in a grocery store sounds pretty damned sweet, doesn’t it? Or even working as a biological test subject. Heh, yeah, I’d rather grow mutant ears on my back than keep doing this. Being a freak of nature would be better than being a thief any day of the week. He blinked several times. He told the room to stop spinning, or to at least only spin one way. Shrug it off, he told himself, and drew a deep breath, and when he let it out he coughed.


It hurts when you do that. It hurts when you cough. He convinced the ceiling fan to only spin clockwise. There, you’ve made some headway. Now sit up. He tried, made it halfway up then fell. He tried again, and this time succeeded. He brought his hands to his face and when he did all the pain rushed into his head. Burning pain, like a million matchsticks flaring in it at once. Shrug it off, shrug it off, shrug it off. Now use the desk and get yourself to your feet. Remember when you were a baby and you needed help getting up? It’s the exact same thing, just use the desk, take hold of it and pull yourself up. He reached out, took hold of the desk, then stayed there. What are you waiting for, Chief? He flicked the loose tooth with his tongue. He pulled, felt pain everywhere and wanted to scream but didn’t. Eventually, he made it to his feet. His legs were like hot melting rubber. They wobbled like taffy. He clenched his teeth and his entire body went crazy with spasms. He almost lost his balance but held onto the desk, and a moment later he felt collected. Collected enough to let go. He stumbled but stayed up. He looked at the man, head bludgeoned by a ream of paper. There’s one manuscript that won’t make it, he said, and slowly crossed the room and stepped back into the hall.


He turned right, staggered into the bathroom and picked up his gun. Then he lifted the toilet seat, dropped to his knees and threw up. It was all blood and bile—he hadn’t eaten anything in ages. It hurts when you do that. It hurts when you throw up. Flushing the toilet he got up and stepped out of the bathroom. He left the other man’s guns where they were and walked down the hall. He stepped over the body he’d shot up earlier and put his gun away. “It’s done,” he said, then drew a deep breath. “It’s all over.” He looked at Freddy and Charlie and Frazier. Freddy’s dead eyes were staring out the window to the sun that was just peeking its head out over the mountains. He turned to the kitchen. The counter was riddled with bullet holes, as was the stove and the wall across the way. “Sandra?” he said. “You can come out now, it’s all right.” But Sandra didn’t answer. Dempster felt a light-headed wave and almost fell down. He caught himself, then hobbled across the room and reached the kitchen counter. When he rounded it he saw Sandra sprawled on her back. There was a hole in her head with a tiny stream of blood, and her eyes stared up but looked at nothing. He knelt beside her and said her name but she didn’t respond. She didn’t move, just kept on staring up with lifeless eyes. His hands clenched into fists. His head shook, slowly at first, then faster and faster.


She’d gotten up. Everything had suddenly been quiet and so she had gotten up and looked. The dumb bitch had gotten up and looked and now the girl with the porcelain-like face was dead. The girl who locked her keys in her car and thanked him in French when he’d opened it was dead. The girl who had no interest in being a genius and only wanted love and romance was dead. The girl interested in life and death, the girl who wanted to watch the sun rise in the morning and set at night, the girl who wanted to make love under the stars with someone she loved and didn’t care if she ever did anything brilliant. She was dead. The lady who held him the other night when he was so scared was dead. The woman who said she loved him was dead. He stayed there, kneeling beside her for a while. Then he moved his fingers over her eyes and closed them, and kissed her once on the forehead. He turned to leave. Then he stopped and turned back. He kneeled down and took her into his arms, and cried for a long, long time. He kissed her clammy cheek, then set her back down gently, stepped over her, crouched, and opened the suitcase. He didn’t care about most of it, just the cash. He took it all, then left the house and went out to the Nissan. The key was still in the ignition. He got behind the wheel, turned the key, and brought the car to life, wondering in some distant area of his mind if it might resurrect her. He put the car into reverse, made a tight half circle, then put it in drive and slowly drove out of the clearing and got onto the road. The sun was up now. It was bright and he was driving right into it and it


hurt his eyes. Eventually he got back to the interstate and went south until he hit I-40. He took it east. After a short while he reached into the back, into his bag, and found the yellow sheet of paper that at one time had been folded twice. He set it on the seat, where Sandra was supposed to be. He switched on the radio, played with the channels for a moment then saw there was a tape sitting halfway in the deck. He pushed it in. He remembered the song from when he was waiting for Mike at Essentials and checking out the music on the listening stations. It was the Hollis Wake.

Where’s the lamp unto my feet? Where’s the hope within my prayer? All the times that I called out, I wonder: were you really there?

He listened, unspeakable suffering pouring through him, bent and broken like a partially completed jigsaw puzzle, a part of it life, another part a swan song in the valley of the shadow of death, the morning sun playing tricks on him when he crested a hill and the light spilled in, and he was on his way to Maine with Sandra beside him. They were going to rent a little cottage and


work as grocery baggers, spend their nights reading to each other, drinking wine, making love. She was going to write her novel. I wonder: were you really there? He reached into his pocket. He took out the cell phone that Freddy—now dead and staring at the sun—had given him, and dialed Mike’s phone number. It rang only once. Then a machine picked up. Angela’s voice said: “You’ve reached Mike and Angela. We’d love to hear from you, so leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks.” Then there was a beep. Dempster stared out at the road, watched a car come from the other direction and disappear behind him. “Mike,” he said. “It’s Jack. Sorry I, uh… well, I’m sorry I never called you in regards to dinner, but life got really busy. I’m on my way out of town right now but I wanted to tell you something.” He paused, veered the car gently to the left. And then, “I guess I just wanna say that I’m sorry for, well, for being the way I am. I’m sorry that I’m such a goddamn pathetic loser, and, well… shit.” He sighed. “Forget it. Never mind. Anyway, you better start painting again. You know me like I know you, and if I know you, you know the consequences of letting me down. Letting yourself down is what will let me down, Mike, so don’t do it. Get your ass in gear, pick up a goddamned brush and get to it. Maybe someday I can come to an opening. You’re my best friend,


and I love you. All right. Later, Perky.” He disconnected the phone and then rolled down the window. He watched the sun climb higher into the sky, heard the Hollis Wake sing that they couldn’t find their way back home. He flung the phone as hard as he could against the highway. In the rearview mirror he saw it shatter into a million pieces.


THE END

To Sleep Gently

To Sleep Gently

To Sleep Gently

To Sleep Gently

To Sleep Gently

Gently to the Summit

Gently to the Summit

To sleep

To Sleep

Gently in the Sun

Gently by the Shore

Don't Go to Sleep

Never to Sleep

Sing Me to Sleep

Don't Go to Sleep

Don't Go to Sleep

Sing Me to Sleep

Touch Me Gently

Gently Through the Mill

Gently in the Sun

Gently with the Painters

Gently Down the Stream

Too Hot to Sleep

Don't Go to Sleep

Don't Go to Sleep

Never to Sleep

Too Hot to Sleep

Too Hot to Sleep

Gently Down the Stream

Pull Gently, Tear Here

Touch Me Gently

To Sleep Gently

To Sleep Gently

To Sleep Gently

To Sleep Gently

To Sleep Gently

Gently to the Summit

Gently to the Summit

To sleep

To Sleep

Gently in the Sun

Gently by the Shore

Don't Go to Sleep

Never to Sleep

Sing Me to Sleep

Don't Go to Sleep

Don't Go to Sleep

Sing Me to Sleep

Touch Me Gently

Gently Through the Mill

Gently in the Sun

Gently with the Painters

Gently Down the Stream

Too Hot to Sleep

Don't Go to Sleep

Don't Go to Sleep

Never to Sleep

Too Hot to Sleep

Too Hot to Sleep

Gently Down the Stream

Pull Gently, Tear Here

Touch Me Gently

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