Cracked

by Barbra Leslie

  “So what did you do with the gun last night?” I said. “We tore that room apart.”

  “Put it in the safe in the lobby.”

  The sun was even brighter this afternoon. Waves of heat shimmered across the highway. Darren cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything.

  We passed out of Palm Springs, into the desert. “Hey, there’s a sign for Cabazon,” I said. “Anyone up for some outlet shopping?” Ginger had dragged me down here before. A couple of acres of upscale outlets in the middle of the desert, with a casino nearby, Cabazon is heaven for tourists with holes burning in their pockets.

  No one responded. “Look!” I continued. “McDonald’s!”

  Dave sighed heavily. “I am sorry about this,” he said.

  “Who are you?” Darren said. He didn’t move anything but his face when he spoke, which is when I realized that he was more afraid than I had thought. Sunglasses hide a lot.

  I was able to keep my mouth shut. I tried to think. Was Dave a Fed? Or a cop? But if so, why would he go through last night’s charade? Even if he was somehow undercover trying to solve the kidnapping – and I was almost hoping that was the case, that he was FBI and just taking us to a field office or something – why wouldn’t he have identified himself by now? Did he get caught out without a weapon, and after the horror show at Lucky’s yesterday, didn’t feel safe taking Darren’s gun until we were out cold?

  Soon enough we saw a sign for an exit that would take us over to Joshua Tree National Park.

  “U2’s greatest album,” Dave said. “Also, our destination. Take this exit, Danny.”

  I looked in the rear view but Dave’s eyes were hidden by his sunglasses.

  “I really didn’t want to be in this position,” Dave was saying. He was still looking straight ahead, his gun at the back of Darren’s neck. “You two surprised me yesterday. I didn’t think…” he trailed off. I saw his point. He hadn’t really thought either Darren or I had it in us to kill. And as far as he knew, I had killed Lola after he went out the back door.

  “Live and learn,” I said lightly. “Ginger was our sister. My twin. They have our nephews. If you fuck with us, you will regret it.” I felt strong as I said it, and I meant every word. But with a gun pointed twelve inches away, it came out sounding hollow.

  “Are you law enforcement?” Darren asked. “Is Dave your real name?”

  Dave didn’t answer.

  We drove for a bit, through scrub and weird moon-like trees that, it turned out, were actual Joshua trees. Who knew.

  “We’re going to pass a ranger booth,” Dave said. “You could try and give a signal to the attendant that something is going on here, but I wouldn’t. I think you’re going to want to, uh, take this meeting.” I glanced at him and he seemed to be actually blushing under his sunburn.

  “Take this meeting?” I said. “You must be FBI.”

  “Take a meeting. In the desert,” Darren said, finally. “At gunpoint.”

  We approached a park entrance booth. The gun had moved, presumably under Dave’s thigh. I rolled down the window. “Hi there,” a friendly young woman inside the booth said. “Will you folks be camping tonight?”

  I wondered how often campers turned up in two-seat Fiats. But this was Southern California. Go with the flow.

  “Nope, just catching the sights,” I said. I smiled. Darren leaned across me and took his sunglasses off.

  “Hi,” he said. He beamed his million-dollar smile at her. “My sister isn’t a fan of the outdoors, miss,” he said. “For her, sleeping under the stars means picking up actors at bars in L.A.” I punched his arm, and the girl laughed.

  “Right,” the young woman said. She leaned through her little window and peered more closely at Darren. “I recognize you, don’t I?”

  One of his band’s videos had been in rotation six months or so ago on the music channels. I didn’t know whether Darren had made himself so visible by habit or design, but in either case, Dave cleared his throat.

  Darren nodded quickly at him and looked back at the pretty young woman at the gate, who was running her hands through her hair. I tried very hard not to roll my eyes. “I hear it all the time, but unless you’ve sat in on one of my sociology lectures at Berkeley, probably not.”

  “You’re a prof?” the girl said. She looked skeptical.

  “No tenure yet, though,” he said. He leaned back in his seat and waved as she passed me my change and a map of the park.

  “Well good luck with that.” I could tell she was thinking of changing her major, if this was what the sociology profs looked like. She continued with some kind of welcome to the park but I was already pulling away. I could hear Dave readjust in the miniscule backseat. Sure enough, the gun came out again.

  “Really?” I said. “Do you really think that’s necessary?”

  “I’ve seen your fighting record,” he said. “And I saw you both yesterday.”

  If Dave had seen my fighting record, it meant he had obviously done a fair amount of research on me. It’s not like I went pro or was even a real contender in the ring; I doubted Google would have much to say about me. How in the hell would he know that?

  We all kept quiet for a bit. The car glided through a part of the desert that looked like it was the moon. Huge, smooth rocks, and bizarre, leafless, misshapen trees dotted the landscape. It was past midday, and the sun was unrelenting, even at this time of year. Everything seemed yellow. I wished the roof was down, or the Fiat was air-conditioned.

  We drove for longer than I thought possible. How big could this park be? I looked around for other vehicles, and so far hadn’t seen any. Had someone rented out the whole place to murder us? At this point, it seemed as likely as anything did. I just drove and tried to stay calm and centered.

  But another part of me was tensing my muscles. Girding my loins for battle. Ginger always liked to say “girding my lions for battle.” I glanced at my feet to see if my new sneakers were tied tightly.

  Ginger. I wondered if maybe Dave had been the man in the room with her, in my dream of the moments before Ginger’s death. Or was it Fred? Lowell was the only one of them who had seemed like he had it in him; he had just looked bad. Dave certainly wasn’t who I thought he was a few hours ago, but at the moment everyone I knew was surprising me. I glanced at Darren. He looked back at me and smiled. It was the kind of smile that made me feel part of something. Not alone in the world. I needed that smile, at that moment.

  “Here,” Dave said. He was checking an iPhone. “Pull over here.” We all sat in silence for a minute. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel.

  “Can we get out, at least?” I was antsy and the car was too small. I hadn’t adjusted the seat properly for my height. And if I was going to be shot, I’d rather be standing up outside when it happened.

  And then of course it occurred to me that if Darren and I got out and shut the doors quickly Dave would be locked in the car. The top was up and it would be too difficult and awkward to climb out of that non-existent backseat easily or gracefully, even for someone of Dave’s size. But then I looked around at the landscape. We could run, but there was nowhere to hide closer than a hundred yards away, and with a gun and the Fiat’s canvas roof, Dave could be out of the car in a few seconds.

  I knew Darren was thinking the same thing. I could practically smell his wheels turning. But he’d also had more than his fair share of drinks by the pool, and although he was athletic enough, he wasn’t the fastest runner in the world, a fact which Ginger and I had teased him about mercilessly when we were kids.

  Ginger. A wave of pain took me then, and for a minute I thought I would pass out from it. The sheer misery of missing her, of being clean and sober and not feeling Ginger out there felt like a kick in the solar plexus.

  I must have made a noise because Darren grabbed my hand.

  “No touching,” Dave said.

  Something clicked in my brain at that second. Someone getting between me and a member of my family. Almost befor
e Dave got the words out of his mouth, without thought or hesitation I reached around, knocked the gun out of his hand and elbowed him sharply and efficiently in the face.

  While he was knocked back holding his nose, I picked up the gun.

  I looked at Dave, who had blood spurting from his nose. His head was slightly lowered, one hand trying to catch the blood, but his eyes never left me. I raised the gun and pointed it at him.

  The whole thing had probably taken three seconds.

  “No, Danny,” Darren said. I got the feeling he didn’t want to touch me while I was like this, in case the lightest touch on my arm could jolt me into squeezing the trigger.

  “How does it feel, motherfucker,” I said. I released the safety. My voice was calm, and I don’t think my heart was even racing. “Surprise,” I said softly.

  Darren opened the passenger door and stepped outside. I held the gun steady on Dave while Darren shot his seat forward and grabbed Dave’s arm.

  “Get out,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you not to do anything stupid, or my sister will shoot you. And in the mood she’s in, I think she’d probably start at your ankles and work her way up.” Once Dave was out of the car, I leaned back and grabbed his phone. He’d dropped it when I grabbed the gun from him.

  Oh God, for some crack. My kingdom for some crack.

  The sun was merciless and the air was far drier than anything I was used to. An east coast girl, I much prefer humidity with my heat. And we had no water with us. In the desert.

  “What do you think, leave him here and go?” I looked at Dave. Darren had made him sit on the ground cross-legged with his hands on his head. He looked like a fourth grader who’d been hit in the face by a baseball. Without the gun, he looked weak and harmless. But I certainly wouldn’t be making that assumption about him again anytime soon.

  “It is hot,” Darren said. “I could use a cold one.”

  “Afternoon hangover?” I asked sympathetically. “They’re the worst.”

  “My own fault,” Darren said. “Hair of the dog would be nice though.” I turned right around. There wasn’t another vehicle or person in sight.

  “Shoot him first, do you think?”

  “Hard to say,” Darren replied. He leaned against the car and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket. He lit us each one. I thought of Gene.

  “Since when are you buying cigarettes?” I wanted to know.

  “Since Dickhead Dave over there and his buddies murdered our sister and kidnapped our nephews.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Fair enough.” Dave took his hands off his head and looked about to say something. I walked forward a couple of paces and put the gun to his head. “Dave, I think my brother told you to keep your hands on your fucking head.”

  My voice cracked. My hand was shaking. I realized that my face was wet. I was crying.

  I wanted to kill him. I wanted to put a bullet in his head and leave him for the carrion. I wanted it so badly I could taste iron in my mouth, I could taste the smell of his blood and the metal of the gun in my hand. It was a part of my body at that moment, an extension of my arm, as though by just thinking about how badly I wanted revenge, I could end this man who sat in the dirt in front of me.

  But he had brought us here for a reason. It could have been to kill us – this place was pretty deserted, after all – or maybe there was someone else coming. He had checked the time a lot.

  Besides, if I killed him now, we couldn’t get any information from him. And he obviously had some to give. I took a step back, the gun still on him.

  “Where does Fred have the boys,” I started, and then I heard an engine.

  “Ask him yourself,” Dave said. He looked up at me, his nose a pulpy mess. His voice was nasal, and he sounded very, very tired. “Just ask him yourself.”

  I backed away from Dave and towards Darren and the car, as a dark sedan slowly approached us. I put the gun slightly behind me on the off-chance it was a lost tourist, but my thumb was resting on the safety. I had had enough surprises for one day.

  There was a long moment of quiet. The engine of the sedan turned off, but the glare of the sun made it impossible to see who was behind the wheel.

  Fred Lindquist, my brother-in-law, possibly the murderer of my sister, got out from the driver’s side and stuck his arms in the air nervously. I moved my gun hand out from behind my back but kept it at my side. Darren put his hand on my arm.

  Then Detective Miller got out of the passenger side holding a weapon and trained it on Fred.

  “Well, boys,” I said, “it looks like we’ve got ourselves a party.”

  15

  Now this,” I observed, inhaling deeply on my cigarette, “would be a good time to smoke some crack.”

  All four of the men looked at me.

  “Danny, you have to keep it together,” Fred said. He turned to Miller. “Can I put my arms down now? You’ve already frisked me. I’m not going anywhere.” He gestured around him.

  As I walked toward Fred, I could see Miller nodding, in my peripheral vision. Before anyone could say anything, I slapped Fred, as hard as I could.

  Silence. To his credit, Fred barely flinched, and I watched as a red mark formed on his pale, freckled skin. I didn’t know if I had ever slapped anyone before. Punching or kicking was more my style, but my knuckles were still swollen from Detective French the day before. I walked over to Miller, who reached out one arm as if to embrace me, but it didn’t seem like the moment for intimacy. “How did you find him? And why is he here and not in jail?”

  “He will be,” Miller said. He looked worn out, done in, the dark circles under his eyes even darker than usual, and I had a sudden desire to step into his arms after all. I wanted to rest my face against his neck and smell the rumpled, nicotine scent of his skin. Crack replacement, obviously. “In fact, I shouldn’t be here. I don’t have much time, I have to take him in. But,” and he looked at Fred, who was standing feet shoulder-width apart, hands clasped behind his back and staring straight ahead, as if he was in the military, “he said he had arranged to meet you here. So I was a little, shall we say, concerned.” He looked at Dave. “Who is that?”

  “Fucked if we know,” Darren said.

  We quickly told Miller about how I had met Dave as Dom’s buddy, and about Darren and I being taken at gunpoint to the desert. We neglected to mention the carnage at Lucky’s. If Miller didn’t know already, it didn’t seem like the moment to bring it up. My head felt ready to explode.

  Dave’s real identity could wait. I wanted to hear what Fred had to say.

  Darren and I approached him, and I grabbed my brother’s hand. I knew how he felt, but touching him made me feel it even more strongly. This man had helped Darren with his math homework when Darren couldn’t pass tenth grade calculus to save his life. He ate most of his meals with us from the time he was sixteen because his depressed, widowed mother didn’t cook.

  I thought Darren was going to hit Fred, and obviously Fred did too. He stood his ground and looked straight ahead. But Darren sighed.

  “Well, you’re caught,” he said. “You are hopefully going to spend the rest of your life in jail. What was so important that you had this dickwad” – he gestured back at Dave, who was still sitting cross-legged in the dirt – “pull a gun on us and bring us here?”

  “I hired him,” Fred said. “I hired him to follow Ginger. When she started disappearing.”

  I looked at Dave. “So you’re some kind of private investigator?”

  Dave shrugged. He looked like he was going to say something, but he stopped and gingerly touched his nose.

  “Hands on your head,” Darren said, glancing at him only briefly.

  “We don’t have much time,” Miller said. “I have to get him back or there will be another manhunt, and I would prefer not to lose my badge. Or go to jail with scum like him,” he added, nodding at Fred.

  “You need to get the boys back,” Fred said. He was looking at me, then at Darren.
“Please.”

  I looked at Fred. He was a ruined man. He did not look like a man who had carried out the murder of his wife and kidnapping of his sons.

  “Gladly,” I said. “Where are they?” Darren looked at me. I shrugged. “Benefit of the doubt,” I said.

  “Toronto,” he answered quickly. “At least, I think they are.” He leaned against the car, and Miller took a step nearer him. Fred waved his hand as if to say don’t worry. “And so is Jack.”

  “Jack?” Darren and I said, at exactly the same moment. In a less disturbing moment, it might have been funny.

  Fred nodded, and glanced at Miller. “I need to make this quick, and you need to hear it. I know you hate me. I don’t blame you. I did something horrible to Ginger. But I didn’t kill her.”

  I breathed deeply, trying to slow the racing of my heart so that I could hear him above the blood pounding in my ears.

  “You know we had a nanny,” Fred was saying. “Jeanette.”

  I looked at Dave. “Lola’s sister,” I said. He nodded.

  “I was the one who wanted Ginger to get a nanny. She didn’t want to. She didn’t care if the house was chaos or if the boys ran around like savages. She said it made a house a home.” Fred sounded odd, not like himself. Since when did he care about a messy house? But there was a catch in his throat. “I was rich and getting richer, even in this economy. Did Ginger tell you about my business?”

  “We don’t care about that,” Darren said. “Just tell us where the boys are.” He nearly yelled the last few words and it seemed to shock all of us.

  “Yes. Well I wanted us to have a nanny so Ginger could spend more time on herself. There was no reason she should have to work as hard as she did, running after the boys, you see?”

  “Ginger loved running after the boys,” I said. “What did you want her to do, spend more time shopping and getting her nails done?” How did Jack have anything to do with this?