Death Echo

by Elizabeth Lowell

  As far as he could tell, about everyone lost. The fishing was gone, the forests logged out, the crabbing unpredictable, the town itself too poor to pave some of the streets within the city limits. People who lived in Rosario drove to nearby towns to shop for anything more durable than groceries and beer.

  Through all the years, smuggling was the only Rosario industry that had truly thrived. Cigarettes north and marijuana south, a round trip that could net thousands or end in gunfire, prison, or death.

  The smuggling was run by the Eastern European immigrants who had been fishermen and smugglers in their homeland. There had been no reason to change a winning combination when they emigrated to America a century or more ago. With each generation or each old-world conflict, their ranks grew. Overseas cousins, second cousins, relations by marriage, and relatives no American bothered to count fled to the New World when the Old World became deadly.

  Once, Mac had thought of joining the local smuggling industry. A close friend of his had been Ukrainian, another was Salish Indian, giving him an entre into the closed worlds of Rosario’s immigrant and native communities. Mac had been seventeen and too full of testosterone to put up with the small town of his birth. But after a few smuggling runs, he got smart, left town, and joined the navy.

  His best friend died two months later, simply vanished during a smuggling run. Tommy still survived, if anyone called living as a barely functioning alcoholic on the rez survival.

  Most of the time Mac thought he’d made the right choice in leaving Rosario and smuggling behind. If he had any doubts, all he had to do was visit Tommy.

  My own personal penance.

  Yet Mac couldn’t figure out what he was paying for. He’d got out, Tommy had stayed, and life went on either way. Yet somehow Mac felt guilty, as if whatever life he’d enjoyed had come at Tommy’s expense. It was stupid, but there it was. Guilt for being born white in a time and place where non-whites were considered second class.

  The distant flash of headlights in the rearview mirror shook Mac out of his bleak thoughts. There wasn’t much traffic out late on a weeknight. The people who had families to support were asleep. The people with habits to support had either scored or gone home with the shakes. The drinkers were wrapped up in their favorite bar, huddled protectively over their poison of choice. They wouldn’t move until they passed out or the bars closed.

  God, I hate this town.

  But I love Puget Sound.

  The headlights in the rearview mirror jiggled again as the vehicle went over a rough patch of pavement. The state highway that headed out to the federal freeway always needed repair. Eventually the state highway would get what it needed, after the densely packed voters in Seattle got what they wanted. Simple math and electoral politics.

  Mac slowed so he could turn onto Tribal Road without hitting his brakes. No point in making it easier if someone was following him. Since his white guilt had taken him many times to see Tommy, Mac knew the way. He could have driven without headlights, but he didn’t want to run over stray animals or people.

  He watched in the rearview mirror as the headlights that had been behind him passed the Tribal Road’s turnoff.

  So much for paranoids having real enemies, he told himself.

  Tribal Road skirted the edge of tidal mudflats for several miles before heading into the scrubby, fourth-growth forest that bordered the tidal zone. The road was in the open until Mac reached the trees. He kept glancing at the rearview and side mirrors.

  Brake lights glowed on the highway as a vehicle slowed, then made a U-turn and came back toward Mac. The vehicle turned onto Tribal Road.

  Score one for paranoia, he thought unhappily.

  He killed his headlights, accelerated hard, and prayed the tribal cops were drinking together. He didn’t lift his foot until he reached the bend in the road. Fifty yards later he turned and coasted onto twin dirt ruts that bored into the scrubby forest. The tires skidded a little in the shallow muck before they bit in. He kept coasting until he saw the old cedar stump. It was twelve feet high and wide enough to hide a truck behind, a leftover from the nineteenth century when big trees were cut off where the trunk finally began to narrow, no matter how high up that was. The fifteen-or twenty-foot-high stump was left behind to rot. With cedar, it took a long time.

  He tucked behind the stump, turned the engine off, and yanked on the emergency brake. An instant later he was lowering the window.

  A slight breeze. The scent of moldy forest and evergreen and salt. No lights anywhere. No sound but the irregular ticking of the truck’s engine as it cooled.

  And the mosquitoes. It took them about ten seconds to realize there was fresh food available.

  Chow down, he thought. I hope I poison you.

  He heard a vehicle approaching from the direction of the highway. It was still several hundred yards away and closing fast.

  Mac got out and eased the door shut behind him. From the dense shadow of the forest, he watched the narrow opening onto Tribal Road that was the only sign the rutted, partially overgrown track existed.

  A car flashed by the cramped opening.

  Pale. Could be white.

  Could be a Jeep.

  And it could be a tired driver returning to the rez after a long day on the water or working at the casino.

  As the sound of the speeding car faded, Mac jogged toward Tribal Road, swearing at himself for being paranoid but not about to change. He hesitated in the shadow of the forest just long enough to be certain there wasn’t any traffic heading his way. When he was sure he was alone, he scuffed out the fresh tire marks he had left in the peaty mud when he had turned onto the nameless, overgrown dirt lane. Soon there was no clear sign of his recent passage.

  To make doubly certain, he broke off a cedar branch as long as his arm and messed up the tire tracks even more. Then he threw the bough back into the woods and scattered some old forest debris over the lane. He’d just finished when heard a distant engine. He pushed deeper into the forest and waited.

  He didn’t wait long.

  Score two for paranoia.

  A car was coming back down Tribal Road, heading for the state highway. The vehicle’s high beams were on and it was moving slowly. A flashlight speared through the open driver’s side window and probed the dark roadside.

  The skin on the back of his neck tingled.

  Mac was close enough to the road to recognize the body shape of the Jeep when it went by. But no matter how hard his paranoia worked, he couldn’t figure out even a stupid reason for someone to follow him.

  Yet there it was as big as life, a white Jeep whose driver was shining a flashlight over every opening along Tribal Road, looking for him.

  Mac wasn’t particularly worried about being found. He had been trained in escape and evasion by experts. He could vanish in bare desert at high noon. Nighttime in the forest was easy.

  Mosquitoes sung nastily in the darkness.

  He resigned himself to being fast food for bloodsuckers.

  Headlights and the flashlight flickered through the woods as the prowling car slowly approached. The Jeep stopped at the far end of the tunnel. The beam of the flashlight ran over the shoulder where Mac had brushed away his tracks. As the driver studied the ground, the light twitched back and forth like a hunting cat’s tail.

  The driver’s door opened.

  No overhead light, Mac thought sourly. I wish that surprised me.

  Without getting out, the driver bent over and held the light almost parallel to and only inches above the ground. The raking beam of light revealed more details than a light held at ninety degrees to the ground would have.

  Someone has been trained in the basics of tracking. Mac breathed slowly, shallowly, making no sound. This just keeps getting better and better.

  The light raked over the dirt lane. Mac hoped that he’d done a good enough job cleaning up.

  Should have been more careful. Been a civilian too long.

  At least he hadn’t left par
allel lines in the muck with the branch. Not all of his training had been forgotten or ignored.

  After a long minute, the flashlight snapped off and the Jeep drove on down the road.

  Mac didn’t move until the sound of the Jeep’s tires had faded. Then he reached up and rubbed away the mosquito that had been drilling down into his neck. A second insect had already come and gone from his cheek. He could feel a welt rising there.

  Damn. I’ll itch for hours.

  But he kept standing in the night anyway, waiting, listening, waiting some more.

  11

  DAY ONE

  ON THE RESERVATION

  11:17 P.M.

  After walking deeper into the forest for about half a mile on the dirt track, Mac came to the edge of a clearing. Waist-high weeds, several rusting wrecks, and one ancient flatbed truck piled with corroding crab traps landscaped the area around the old trailer house.

  He paused in the shadows as he always did. And, as always, he felt like he was back in a war zone.

  Maybe that’s why I hate coming here.

  He shifted the bottle of bourbon and wished it was that easy, but he knew it wasn’t.

  Tommy was all tied up with Mac’s own past, the wild times from child to man, running free when someone should have hauled him up by the scruff and shaken some sense into him. He’d been the youngest of three. His father had hit the road just after Mac’s birth. His mother hadn’t left physically; she’d just quietly drunk herself into an early grave. Hard work, but she’d kept at it until she reached her goal.

  Tommy was headed down that same early-grave road. It wasn’t alcohol that would get him there, though it was certainly greasing the way. Tommy’s reckless rage was what would kill him, his certainty that someone or something had stolen everything worth having, leaving him with a double handful of dog shit.

  Once, Mac had felt the same way. Then he’d grown up, taken responsibility for his choices, and clawed his way out of a life that should have destroyed him the way it had his mother and two older brothers.

  He didn’t even know if one of his brothers was still alive. The other had died in a single car rollover on the highway outside Rosario an hour after the bars closed.

  Maybe that’s why I visit Tommy. He’s all that’s left of my childhood.

  Pathetic.

  Both of us.

  Get over it, he told himself grimly. That boat sailed and sank a long time ago. Looking back is just another way of drowning.

  The breeze shifted, bringing with it the stink of a trash fire smoldering in a fifty-five-gallon fuel drum. The rank odor of an overflowing outhouse lay heavily beneath the smoke. Light from a bare bulb gleamed weakly through the dirty window in the front of the trailer. Heavy metal music from his and Tommy’s childhood hammered through the darkness, making the mold-streaked trailer vibrate.

  Mac walked swiftly across the clearing and pounded on the front door. “Yo, Tommy. You still awake? I brought the bourbon you said I owed you.”

  It was the kind of bourbon Tommy couldn’t afford but knew he deserved.

  Mac pounded harder. “Tommy, it’s Mac. You in there or did I make the drive for nothing?”

  Part of Mac hoped that Tommy was gone. A big part.

  The music stopped.

  “Who’s there?” The voice was hoarse, wary.

  “Mac.”

  “Dude! It’s about time. I thought you forgot me and sucked down the righteous booze alone.”

  The door opened, framing Tommy’s narrow body in light. The smell of rancid takeout pizza rolled over Mac, competing with the other rank odors of the night.

  “A whole bottle?” Mac said, shaking his head. “I never could drink like that.”

  “Yeah, true fact. You’re a white pussy. Don’t just stand there looking stupid. Bring that bottle in.”

  Mac walked inside and saw that it was still the maid’s year off. Even for a bachelor sea captain, the place was a mess.

  Tommy opened the bourbon bottle and took a long swig. “Damn, but that’s primo. Just in time, too. I’m broke and tired of being straight.”

  “I hear crabbing is really down,” Mac said.

  “You hear right.” Tommy took another swig. “But I got me a sweet gig coming.”

  “Good,” Mac said quickly, not wanting to hear more about any sweet gig Tommy might have.

  Too late. Tommy was already talking.

  “Gonna get rich, richer than the ass clowns that run the casino.”

  Mac nodded and kept his mouth shut. He’d heard it all before, and if he came back to the rez, he’d hear it again.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Tommy said. “I know you don’t believe me. Nobody believes me.”

  “If getting rich was easy, there would be a lot more rich people,” Mac said mildly.

  “If they can’t see the way, too bad.” Tommy took another long swig and sighed. “Better than a woman, not as good as crank.”

  Mac frowned. “Thought you gave that crap up.”

  “Did. Ran out of money. Did some deals.” Tommy shrugged his thin shoulders. “But now I’m goin’ for the gold. Just like a fuckin’ athlete.”

  Laughter that wasn’t quite sane filled the small trailer.

  Mac snagged the bottle and took what looked like a drink. It wasn’t. He planned on driving home. Soon. Obviously Tommy was riding the ragged edge of the shakes.

  Coming off crank was a bitch.

  Tommy grabbed the bottle again and flopped into an overstuffed chair that was held together by duct tape. A lamp with a bare bulb sat on the small table nearby. It cast his grinning features in stark angles, dark hollows, too many lines and not enough teeth for a man who hadn’t seen the other side of forty yet.

  “Remember when we ran that load of cigarettes to Vancouver?” Tommy asked, swiping hair out of his face with a dirty hand.

  “Long time ago. We were young and stupid.”

  “Sweet money.” Tommy drank and swallowed, drank and swallowed, his Adam’s apple working like a piston. “That’s smart.”

  “Karl died.”

  “Lucky Karl. He didn’t have to live rat-turd poor on the rez.” Neither do you. But Mac kept that truth to himself. A man in Tommy’s shape could teeter from normal to enraged in a heartbeat.

  “But I’m getting out,” Tommy said after another long drink. “Gonna take my money from my next job and head for white man’s land. Live like a fuckin’ sheik.”

  “Sounds good.” As always.

  Too bad it never came through.

  The half bottle of booze that Tommy had bolted hit him suddenly. He shook his head and slumped back into the chair.

  “Just the beginning,” Tommy mumbled. “And here I thought old Granny was just a mama’s boy. Turns out he’s a big swinging dick. Got rich friends.” Tommy frowned. “Mean bastard.” A shiver shook his wiry frame. “Goddam, he’s one mean son of a bitch.”

  Mac frowned. Tommy wasn’t making any sense. He looked close to panic, eyes wide, sweating although the room was cold.

  “You okay?” Mac asked.

  Tommy took another long gulp. “Nothin’ wrong that a bottle of good bourbon won’t cure.”

  Mac kept his mouth shut and wished he’d gone straight home from the marina.

  Like the old saying—no good deed goes unpunished.

  Before Tommy could swig again, Mac retrieved the bottle. “Careful, buddy,” Mac said. “That’s a load of alcohol hitting your system all at once.”

  “Ain’t no pussy.”

  “Somebody say you were?” Mac asked.

  “A pussy wouldn’t take Blackbird out. Bad shit going down. Really bad. Gonna be rich. Gimme the bottle.”

  Mac pretended to drink. Anything to keep the bourbon out of Tommy’s reach. He always had loved booze, but at the rate he was drinking, he was going to kill himself tonight.

  “So when does your job begin?” Mac asked, trying to keep Tommy out of the bottle.

  “What job?”

  “The one that
’s going to make you rich.”

  “Need a drink.”

  “Wait your turn.” Mac pretended to drink. The good news was that Tommy was going down fast, floating facedown in a bourbon sea.

  “They been smuggling forever. Even before they got here.”

  “Who?” Mac asked.

  “Granny’s kind.”

  Lovich, Mac realized, understanding.

  Grant Robert Lovich, known as Bobby to his cousins and Granny to the kids who hated him in school. Like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather. Outsiders to the whites and Indians alike. Determined outsiders.

  “Thought we agreed a long time ago that what our parents believed was bullshit,” Mac said.

  “Then how come they own Blue Water and I don’t have nothing? Only crooks make out in Rosario.”

  The sullen cast to Tommy’s face was more warning than Mac needed.

  Time to go. “Gimme the bottle,” Tommy snarled. “Fuckin’ foreigners. We was here first, now we got dirt.”

  And casinos.

  And smuggling.

  The kind of hopeless existence that destroys souls.

  Mac went to the sink and poured out all but a taste of the bourbon. He gave the bottle to Tommy and walked out into the night.

  Mac hoped whoever was following him caught up again. He felt like hitting something.

  12

  DAY TWO

  ROSARIO

  11:30 A.M.

  Emma hated parking in the open for a surveillance, but there wasn’t any choice. The Blue Water marina parking lot didn’t have so much as a leaf to hide behind. The best she could do was wedge the Jeep between two rumpled pickups and pretend not to be there at all. The puddles and mud she’d deliberately taken the Jeep through helped it to blend in. She was no longer driving a shiny white rental.

  And she had a lovely view of Blackbird.

  People wearing tool belts were swarming over the yacht. A man whose picture was on the billboard advertising Blue Water Marine Group was overseeing, shouting and waving his arms. If the billboard could be trusted, it was Bob Lovich himself giving orders. Another man stood nearby—above medium height, stocky build, wraparound sunglasses, and a coat cut to fit over a shoulder holster. He didn’t look like Stan Amanar, also featured on the billboard, but he might have been.