by Laird Barron
I pulled alongside and passed a paper bag through the window. Rourke took a gander at the cash within. He hadn’t shaved lately and his jowls were gray and grizzled.
He said, “You may be onto something with the Suburban. Woman who lives across the street from your girl Reba’s place remembers seeing that car double-parked in the street on the day in question. Says a Native American was at the wheel. All she knows. The Suburban came up stolen. Belongs to a duffer with property here and in Florida. Didn’t even realize he’d been ripped off until I called him.”
“I guess you’re hunting it.”
“High and low. As for the sausage-making end of it—phone records don’t look promising. We’re cross-referencing numbers. No evidence that she skipped town by bus, train, or jet. Nothing on surveillance, nothing on paper.”
“Let me know if you get a hit.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be in touch. We’ve got mutual friends.”
“That so?”
“I got a season pass to the Sultan’s Swing on Uncle Curtis’s tab. Need anything, you holler.”
“It’s a small world, after all. We’re cozy as, well, pigs in a blanket.”
“There’s funny and then there’s your act.”
“Something you could help me with—Reba Walker’s laptop. Her roommate says the police confiscated it. Any useful data? Save me a lot of legwork.”
Rourke gave me a blank stare.
“Nobody’s confiscated anything. We did a phone interview with the Jefferson chick. Dumb as a bag of hammers.”
Had Kari lied about the computer? She’d acted awfully sketchy, but ingenuous regarding that particular detail. This definitely called for another visit.
“By the way, you happen to have a tail on anybody at the Walker farm?”
“No. Why?”
“Maybe nothing.”
“Better watch your six.” Rourke took a big bite of fries.
“Okeydokey,” I said. “Have a lucky day, Officer.”
Five minutes down the road, I glimpsed another brown sedan in my mirror. The car hung way back and slid in behind a panel van. A driver and a passenger. Cops or government types, definitely. Why were they interested in little old me?
I tuned the radio to a classic ’80s station and pressed the accelerator.
PART II
POLYPHEMUS
NINETEEN
Dad swore by Fairbairn and Applegate, two of the toughest hand-to-hand experts alive during the World War II era. Jim Bowie might’ve been the only warrior Dad respected more. He first taught me some of that rough-and-tumble around the tender age of seven. How to make a proper fist, the most vulnerable areas of the human body, where to kick a man to put him down, how to take a punch. Because, son, you’re going to get punched. He drilled me in the art of down and dirty. The ear clap, the head-butt, the hip throw. The fish hook and Monkey Steals the Peach.
Unfold your fingers like this, son, and slash the edge of your hand across his windpipe. Somebody gets you in a headlock or a bear hug, grab his pinky and snap it off. Drop your chin and take the blow. Roll with the punch. Use your bulk to absorb the shock. You’re a great, armor-scaled fish, rolling. Ignore pain. Ignore fear.
In life-or-death struggle, son, always go for the bridge of the nose, the eyes, the philtrum, or the throat. Bite, gouge, kick. Never use your hands if you can help it. Never fight fair. Son, this is CPR in reverse: stop the breathing, start the bleeding, induce shock.
He gave me my first gusher of a bloody nose and my first concussion. With love, naturally. Always with love. His pores oozed scotch as he knocked me around the backyard of whatever military accommodation was our home at the moment. As I grew older and bigger, the lessons escalated. I proved durable and received only one serious broken bone from getting slammed through a deck table onto flagstones. That incident taught me it was far better to roll or bounce.
Six years since our last encounter and yet the very notion of getting within spitting distance of him gave me acid. The coward in me hoped Mervin was traveling abroad. I would have tea and cookies with his girlfriend, Harriet, and leave a note in her care.
I glanced at my white knuckles. The vinyl on the steering wheel had torn. Sweat trickled along my clenched jaw. I pulled in at a service station and washed my face in the lavatory. Bought a cup of coffee, heavy sugar and cream, and sipped it at the window while I scanned the road for the brown sedan. A decent stream of summer traffic flashed along the two-lane. None of it my shadow. The digital thermometer over the store sign read 89 F, and the humidity was oppressive.
“Not even June and lookit this damned weather!” the clerk said when he rang me up for a bottle of seltzer. “Not even June, man. I’m movin’ to Scotland. Three days of summer on the moors, man. It’s all they get over there. Three days of summer. That’s the life.”
It didn’t sound like such a bad idea. Folks in the Scottish countryside needed somebody to dole out their petrol and Crunchies, same as anywhere.
* * *
—
MR. APOLLO PROVIDED DAD’S new address before I departed Alaska. I’d penciled in a driving route on a map of New York State in case it ever came to this. The map did its work. Another twenty miles along the highway carried me into the heart of big country. Mountain domes heaved up from billion-years-old bedrock. I turned onto a less traveled access road at a fancy sign advertising the Anvil Mt. Resort. Forest surrounded me for a while. Pine, elm, and birch gradually thinned as the narrow lane twisted and climbed. A hawk wheeled on a wire beneath the sun.
I crossed a field littered with prehistoric stones and shocks of white grass. Farther on, a massive wooden gate hung ajar. Dad’s house sat atop a bluff; a timber lodge that resembled the kind of place Arnold Schwarzenegger would’ve annihilated in a fireball back in the 1980s. The outbuildings, a garage and a barn, made it a matching set. Indeed, this was the High Lonesome and it comported handily with my father’s fantasy of himself as the indomitable lord of all he surveyed.
How did his lady feel about it? Did she play the role of a fairy-tale princess cloistered in a wilderness castle? The satellite dish on the roof suggested an interest in the outside world. Maybe it was enough.
“Here you are in the lion’s den,” Harriet Calisto said from the porch. She gestured to a husky man in aviator glasses and a bomber jacket who’d appeared from behind a juniper hedge with a rifle at port arms. “It’s all right, Franklin.” To me she said, “Come on in, darling. The lemonade’s cold and the vodka’s colder.”
The décor was what you might expect from a pulp action hero who’d invested shrewdly. Bearskin rugs and buffalo-head trophies; swords, shields, and paintings of longships tossed upon stormy seas. Antique rifles under glass. Bay windows oversaw a vista of craggy mountainside and pristine wilderness. A white wolf slept near the darkened hearth. Huge and collarless, it raised its head and fixed me with its predator’s eye. Only for a few moments, sufficient to let me know I’d been made. White Fang lowered his head to snooze again, but I wasn’t fooled.
Harriet poured a lemonade and vodka into a frosted glass and kissed my cheek when she handed it over. I whiffed jasmine. Jasmine was Dad’s favorite scent next to leather and scotch.
“My word. It feels like forever,” she said without a trace of surprise at my abrupt arrival. “You’ve been in another scrap.”
“The guy got in a couple dozen lucky punches.” The fact I’d changed into a fresh shirt and slacks didn’t do much to offset my gruesomeness, apparently.
This was only our third meeting in the flesh. On the most recent occasion, she’d presided over a brief, ugly scrum that resulted in bruised jaws and a father–son divide that widened unto an abyss. You wouldn’t have detected the strain from her breezy demeanor, though.
Harriet was lean and graceful in a white summer dress that demonstrated her legs to good effect. An elegant lady; mi
ldly effervescent in the manner Norma Jean had been in her time, with a curled blonde bob and Nordic blue eyes. Twenty years my senior, her smoldering sex appeal hit like a punch to the sternum. That appeal wasn’t ornamental; she deployed it like a weapon. At point-blank range, the strength of her personality crackled even more so than the charm she’d radiated in a score of thriller and crime flicks. A consummate performer, she’d switched between damsel in distress and femme fatale with ease.
Dad, that cagey bastard, knew how to pick them.
“Sorry to drop in on you.”
I prowled the room, eyeing framed photographs, certificates, and knickknacks. The photos were mainly of Dad in uniform at various ports of call, often flanked by comrades-in-arms. There was one of my graying, lop-eared dog, Achilles, and a young, long-haired version of me on a beach in Cordova. I quickly averted my gaze.
“It must be important,” she said. “And no need to apologize. You are always welcome, Isaiah. I hope it wasn’t difficult to find us.”
“You’re fortunate I deactivated the claymores,” Dad said. “I was expecting a parcel and didn’t want to blow the delivery guy to smithereens.” Likely joking, although he was also possibly dead serious.
He’d come down the spiral staircase, moving with spryness remarkable for a septuagenarian. Tall and rawboned, silver hair cropped a touch longer than regulation. All sharp angles and sanded planes, his rough-hewn visage belonged on a Greek statue. He wore a gray chambray shirt, a thick belt with a platinum buckle, and tucked his khakis into a pair of weathered cowboy boots. There’d be a knife on him somewhere, and possibly a gun.
I studied the man, reflecting upon the fact I’d wasted a portion of my late teens and early twenties plotting a variety of fantastical and elaborate schemes to destroy him for what he’d done to Mom. That particular hatred had scabbed over with time and also due to circumstances not always being what they seemed. Other wounds remained. One glance at him standing there, ramrod straight and larger than life, a sardonic smirk in place, lent my phantom pains substance. The chill in his pale eyes suggested the suffering was mutual.
“There’s a face only a mother could love. At least you aren’t dead yet. That’s an accomplishment. Hell of an accomplishment, considering.” He opened an oak humidor and selected a cigar. He snipped the end with a silver cutter, struck a match, and spent a few seconds getting the cherry bright. His calculating gaze never wavered. “Care for one? Dominican.”
“No thanks,” I said. “Funny. The last gold-plated sonofabitch I called on was partial to fancy cigars as well. A mobster down in the valley. Him, I smoked with. Not you.”
“Well, son, you felt comfortable with him. A dog lies with its own kind.”
“Mervin.” Harriet folded her arms. Her expression was ice and fire. A warning from the goddess. “I’ll leave you boys to reminisce. It’s good to see you again, Isaiah.” She departed the room, the white wolf appearing like magic at her heel.
After she’d gone, Dad sighed. He puffed his cigar and turned a cold shoulder to the liquor cabinet. Odd, for him.
“I’m on a three-week overseas trip starting tomorrow. You’ve got excellent timing.”
“Taking a flier, Dad. It’s not that bad a drive up here. Either way, I’d get to ogle your lovely girlfriend. When did you kick the sauce?”
He ignored the question.
“There aren’t any accidents. You always had a gift. A sixth sense. Runs in the family, you know. Both sides for generations. You and I, your mother . . . It’s much stronger in us.”
“I didn’t come to attain rapprochement. I need something.”
“Naturally.” He went to a distant part of the house and unlocked an armoire. The armoire was full of rifles. He selected a Sharps .50-90, restored from its Wild West heyday and polished to a dull shine. “C’mon, boy. Let’s put a few rounds through ol’ Betsy here. I think better when I’m sighting in a rifle.”
TWENTY
A crisp late-afternoon breeze obliged me to fetch my coat from the car. Hot days and cool nights were the rule at this elevation. It reminded me a tiny bit of home during autumn before the big freeze rolled across the land and sealed in every living thing.
Dad loaded his own black powder cartridges. He took an ammo box from his shop in the barn and we lugged rifle and bullets to a clearing. He could’ve easily splurged on a proper shooting range with target rings on tracks and sandbag backstops, but he kept it old-school: bottles on a fence post, a stump marked by a white blaze, the rusted hulk of an abandoned tractor. His only concession to health and safety was the mismatched sets of headphones we clapped over our ears. We didn’t use a tripod either; stood there like real men, stock snugged tight to shoulder, and boomed away, one buffalo-killing slug after another. The Sharps kicked with a vengeance, adding to my collection of bruises, but I bravely carried on.
After filling a third of a number ten coffee can with spent cartridges, we left our cloud of blue smoke and moseyed down to see how we’d done.
“Shooting still isn’t your forte,” Dad said, poking a finger through a ragged hole I’d drilled several inches below the faded emblem on the tractor’s side panel.
“Target practice isn’t my forte,” I said.
He straightened and gazed out over the ridge. In profile, his features were hawkish. The fact I’d turned out nothing like him had to rankle. It would explain some of the harder knocks of my childhood.
“Had a bet with myself.” Dad continued to survey his domain. “Two-to-one, you’d never show your face around here. My flesh and blood is mighty stubborn. Champion grudge bearers to the last. But, you’ve come home, hat in hand. I ask myself, what calamity has befallen my prodigal son that would bring him so meek and mild back into the fold?”
“Dream on, Pop. I’m not back in the fold. I do come hat in hand.”
“You wouldn’t ask anything for yourself. No sir. You’d sooner take red-hot pokers to the eyeballs than swallow that much pride. It’s important and it’s for someone else. An innocent. Someone’s in a bind and you’ve got to save the day. Even at your worst, there was always a glimmer of nobility down deep, under all that shit you’ve covered yourself in.”
“You should have been a poet, because that’s beautiful. I’m helping a couple search for their granddaughter. She vanished into thin air. There are persons of interest. No proof, thus far.”
“Positive she hasn’t just flown the coop?”
“She didn’t wander off. Possibly she ran. I haven’t crossed it off the list.”
“Could be she’s dead.”
“It’s also possible she’s alive and being held.”
“Did you get a ransom note? No? She isn’t squirreled away. She’s hiding or she’s buried.”
“In any case, time is of the essence, as they say.”
“Why are you wasting it on a family reunion? I doubt I can shed much light on some lost civilian.”
“A friend of mine is involved with the investigation. Name’s Lionel Robard. He’s in a jam with a squad of mercs. Black Dog employees. I want a dossier on an ex–Army NCO named Valens. Dollars to doughnuts he has a rap sheet in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“So what?”
“Make some calls.”
“‘Make some calls,’ he says.” Dad rolled his eyes.
I had no intention of letting him off the hook. Eight months after Mom died, Mervin quietly cashiered out of the Air Force. The military wanted some distance between themselves and a career officer who’d killed his own wife. My old man took many a vacation to exotic locations around the world over the next decade or so. He came into a decent amount of money as well. My siblings claimed Dad made good on various investments and was simply enjoying retired life. I had a different theory about those lost years.
“Yes, Dad, make some calls. NSA, CIA, DoD . . . I don’t know what part of the alphabet soup you fell
into after the Air Force. Some department, some agency, recruited you. They’re always on the lookout for amoral sonsofbitches with experience. I don’t care where you’ve been or what you did. Tap your network, make the calls.”
He didn’t say anything or meet my eye. I went on.
“Valens works for Black Dog. He’s a prick.”
“’Course he is. Those Black Dog cocksuckers commit more atrocities before breakfast than the Taliban do all week. Nobody cares about war crimes so long as the victims wear turbans.”
“I care. A dossier on him and anything else you can uncover. Hell with it. Give me his known associates, and Lionel Robard too.” Snooping on Lionel made me a heel, I suppose. The guilt pangs didn’t change my mind.
Dad laid the rifle over his shoulder. He sighed wearily.
“This is trouble. It stinks to high heaven.”
“We can agree on that,” I said.
“Better have supper before you go. The gal who cooks for us knows her trade.”
The sun dropped below the peaks and the shadows grew long and sharp. Gods take me for a fool if the nearest tor wasn’t a skull glaring down at us. Despite myself, I shivered.
* * *
—
THE CHEF WAS AS GOOD AS ADVERTISED. She grilled steak with all the trimmings. There were candles and Mozart.
In the middle of the crème brûlée dessert, Dad set his spoon aside.
“This incident in Alaska—is it settled?”
“Dad, the less you know . . .” I said.
“Broad strokes is all I’m asking. Are you finished with them?”
“Dear, please.” Harriet raised her brows at him. Not that he heeded her. Dad was a boar, once he got started.
I tried the brûlée. Divine.
“Dad, the question is, are they through with me?”