He thinks he hasn’t been laid in a while. He’s horny. The woman was a fantasy. But when he pulls his head back inside, his eyes weeping with wind-burned tears, he sees there was nothing erotic about the woman. That in itself is curious.
He slides his car over to the right and slows to take the rest stop exit. He pulls into the parking lot and turns off the car. He’s not tired. He doesn’t need a cigarette break. He doesn’t know why he stopped.
He gets out and looks around. Two overflowing garbage cans stand like sentinels guarding the path to a cinderblock bathroom. The path passes a brittle board festooned with tacks and staples. A sun-faded map sits behind scratched Plexiglass in the center. He sips from a drinking fountain. It tastes of warm stale sand. He spits it out.
“Traveling, Jack?” comes a voice behind him.
He turns to see a young man about as old as his son. Eighteen, maybe twenty. He’s got a duffel bag over his shoulder and a light jacket for shade. He strokes the beard stubble under his chin and watches Michael.
“Aren’t we all?” says Michael.
“Going south?”
“Aren’t we all?”
The man smiles and drops his hand from his chin.
Michael looks around. A blue van accelerates out of the parking lot to rejoin traffic. Only his car remains. They’re alone.
“Do I know you?” the man asks.
“No Jack,” Michael says. “You don’t.”
The man smiles at that, a broad toothy grin. A Cheshire cat.
“You looking for a ride?” asks Michael.
“If it’s the right one.”
“How will you know?”
“Years of training.”
Michael waits for him to say more, but he doesn’t so he says, “So are you stranded or what?”
“No. This is where I want to be,” says the man.
“Well, good for you.” Michael allows a little impatience into his voice. He still doesn’t know why he stopped. He looks at the fountain and leans toward it before remembering the taste. “You have any water?” he asks.
“I have some sugar,” the man says and winks. “I think I know you, Jack.”
“My name’s not Jack.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
“So how do you know me?”
“Something about you,” he says. “Something familiar.”
Michael studies him. The duffel is new, bright and stiff. He stands in comfortable walking shoes, dark, clean, rugged pants. His face is tanned and needs a shave. A red bandana is tucked into his collar to draw the sweat from his neck. He has sharp features, handsome and familiar in a forgettable kind of way, a face in a crowd but nothing Michael can place or recognize.
“No, Jack,” Michael says. “I don’t know you.”
The man smiles again and says, “You looking for someone?”
“Yeah. A topless black woman.”
The man shows teeth again. “I know what you mean,” he says.
“Glad one of us does. So you want a ride?”
The man rubs his neck and shakes his head. “No thanks brother.”
“Suit yourself,” Michael says and heads into the bathroom for something to do.
Chapter Three
From the email records between Assurity Insurance and Ross Shipping, Michael sees that Isaac Lowe, the driver, is the prime suspect for the missing truck and cargo. No one comes right out and says it, but both sides circle around the possibility like vultures around a corpse.
He reads the background information Maggie sent him and sips his coffee in the air-conditioned MGM casino. He has Wi-Fi here and gets the early-bird special meant to bring the locals in for lunch. The cheeseburger has won awards, according to the menu, but Michael doesn’t think it’s anything special; just a pineapple ring under the bun to keep with the tropical theme of the restaurant.
Three years ago, Isaac Lowe was involved in a hijacking in Laredo. His rig was stolen at gunpoint by a gang of six men in black ski-masks. They must have been sweating like sprinklers in that south Texas heat. Isaac couldn’t offer a better description than balaclavas and guns. His entire load of computers was taken. The truck was found intact and unmolested two days later. Forty thousand dollars of computer equipment gone but the thieves left an eighty-thousand-dollar truck and trailer parked neatly behind a Safeway. It was practically washed and waxed. Nothing had come of the investigation and Lowe returned to work, backed by his union. It’s a wonder Ross Shipping had let him have such a nice vehicle as the one that was missing now. Maybe they thought that if they kept him away from the border, he’d be all right. Maybe the union was looking over their shoulder. Maybe the shipper was pulling a scam and Isaac was the fall guy.
Assurity had had their in-house investigator collect basic information, coordinate with police, make phone calls, cull computer records—all the usual grunt work that usually solves a crime. But here nothing came of it. Faced with a seven-figure loss, they’d put out a bounty. It was not uncommon when companies faced big losses like this. It’s a shot in the dark, a grasping at straws. If you get enough eyes on a problem, sweeten it with money, miracles have been known to happen.
This means if Michael chooses to poke around the Lowe thing, he’ll have competition. And he is late to the game. The bounty has been out for a week and the truck missing for three. He won’t be able to just file a report at the end of a month with recommendations and findings and expect to get paid. He’ll have to provide proof of a scam or recover the merchandise. Confirmation that the truck is lost or stolen would get him nothing. That was the bounty: get Assurity out from under a million claim and he’ll get a hundred grand, less fifteen percent to Roy, his “boss” at Becker Investigations in Utah. If he uncovers something other than that, like proof it really was jacked, or the smoldering wreck at the bottom of a ravine, he can submit his hours and hope to get something for his time, but he’d be better off putting his last twenty dollars on the double-naught at the roulette wheel. Worse, if he finds the smoldering wreck fifteen minutes after someone else does, they won’t even look at his paperwork.
Michael pours steak sauce over his fries and stabs them with a fork. He is contracted to go to Idaho, see about the Timberline Resort fire and report back. It’s a shit job. It’s poking around ashes, talking to the fire marshal, prodding him, begging him to say something that might, under a lawyer’s twisting manipulation, be taken to suggest arson and so get another insurance company out from under a claim. The resort owner would be ruined, betrayed by a system that promised to protect him but will do everything in its power not to. Michael is supposed to investigate Timberline’s finances, the board of directors, past employees—find someone who might gain from a burned down boathouse. Collect ammo for a smear campaign if need be.
Michael knows that Roy gave him the contract because it was shit work. He’s “lost a step.” His “enthusiasm isn’t up to par,” as Roy said in his last evaluation. Michael doesn’t get the big cases. Not anymore. He gets the grunt work, the stuff new-hires cut their teeth on. If Roy thought there was an actual crime at Timberline, he wouldn’t have given it to Michael.
The St. George case was an aberration. He was in the neighborhood when no one else wanted to drive that far. Michael was always far away. Rather than drive to Idaho, he spent a couple of days with a telephoto lens staking Ron Anderson. His efforts will keep him employed for another month or two unless he screws up the Timberline job and gives Roy reason to fire him. Well, more reason.
Whatever.
Roy is right. His enthusiasm for the job is gone. Hell, his enthusiasm for everything is gone. Why should his dirty job of digging through lies be exempt?
He looks at the Cedar City coin bounty and shakes his head. The coins are gone. It might be a scam—probably is, but it will take months of research, hours in desperate grimy pawn shops and overrated coin shows to get anywhere. Roy would fire him long before anything came of that one.
He looks at the photo of Lowe
’s new red Peterbilt and the missing medical laser and spears a French fry. He craves sweets.
The sound of an orgasming slot machine erupts from the floor. The restaurant’s ambiance is shattered by shrieks of delight and a cacophony of bells and rattles. When someone isn’t robbed here, it’s cause for celebration.
There are hundreds of victims being looted by machine. He wishes he could be as eager as they, but he knows the odds. They might go home broke and bankrupt, or they might never go home at all, rolled in a parking lot for a hundred dollar poker chip, but now, for a moment, they’re distracted and happy. They share a common purpose of robbing from the robbers. Odds be damned, someone could do it. Someone has done it. The bells say so.
He sees the shrieking woman behind him on the left. The flashing lights make it easy to find her, the siren impossible to ignore her. She’s jumping up and down and waving her arms like she’s been chosen to “come on down” at the Price is Right. With interest Michael sees her dark skin. She is thin. Too thin. Emaciated. But she has full breasts. Her tank top bounces wildly in her delight. No bra. Her arms flail and wave and he’s mesmerized by the movement. The shouting and the noise flow together into a single unintelligible roar. His eyes unfocus and he imagines her bare-chested. No. Not bare. A pearlescent white necklace undulating with her body. Her eyes wild and lustful. Her arms a fan of shadow, cartwheels of multiple images. A cheap special effect—one image over another and another in time, in accordion motion, in brilliant color. Her arms become multiple and then blur into wings, like a snow angle, only darker. Darker. The noise is music; her movement a dance. Her purpose complete.
He’s not breathing.
He breaks out of the trance and draws air. His eyes are dry from staring, his head pounds from oxygen deprivation. He has an erection.
The woman is not what he imagined. She is not dark skinned. She is not emaciated. She isn’t even thin. She’s a middle-aged, middle-class, white housewife with a plaid collared shirt. The shadows played tricks on him.
He studies her now, remembering to breathe. He aches for candy. Two casino men arrive and lead her away in triumph through the adoring, circling throng toward the payout cages.
“Five-hundred dollars!” shouts a man in a burgundy blazer. The onlookers applaud for the lucky woman, but it is tempered with envy. Michael can feel it in the restaurant like hunger for meat.
They reset the machine and guards make a path for the woman through the crowd as if they’re escorting a visiting princess. As they pass, Michael sees the gray roots of her hair, the heavy eyeliner now streaked with tears and sweat, and the thick foundation of flesh-colored base that interacts with the casino lights to make her look blue or black under the fluorescents. Her bra is padded. Her heels too tall. She is a walking lie.
Everything is deceit.
He opens a sugar packet and pours it onto his tongue.
“You want another coffee, Sweety?” asks the waitress. Her smile is broad and almost convincing. Her top is too tight and her cleavage the product of a French lingerie engineer. She’s friendly. She acts like she cares if he wants more coffee. But it’s a lie. She wants something. A nice tip, no doubt. Or maybe she’s being watched and is performing for her boss.
“Every word is a lie,” he says.
“What’s that, Sugar?”
“Nothing. Yes, more coffee.”
“How’s the burger? Isn’t it great?”
Follow the leader. Mental manipulation at its most base, most meaningless. All lies and deceit.
“It’s great,” he says and the answer seems to please her as if she’d come up with the recipe herself.
She pours his coffee and shuffles off to another table. More smiles. The table is all men and she pushes her already exploding breasts out a little farther and laughs coquettishly at a low come-on from one of the patrons. Flirting. Harmless flirting. Lies.
But lies aren’t what they used to be.
She flirts well, the waitress, even laughing off an ass-slap from an older guy who really should know better. It’s a put-on but she does it well. And that matters. She takes the insult and turns it to her advantage. An expert deceiver. He likes her.
“Jimmy?”
She is standing over his table.
He doesn’t know the woman, or rather girl. She’s twenty-five at most. Possibly twenty. Maybe younger. No, twenty-one at least; this is a casino and she’s holding a handful of black poker chips.
“No, I’m not Jimmy,” he says. “How old are you?”
“That’s pretty forward,” she says. “I’m twenty-three.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
“You don’t look it.”
“That’s your problem,” she says in an easy way that makes him relax. “You’re no clay man.”
“I wasn’t Jack this morning. Now I’m not Jimmy. I’m not even a clay man. Not my day.”
“There’s still some dirt on you,” she says. “Someone called you Jack today?” With her right hand, she plays with a chain around her neck, gold and thin as floss, a filigree trident at the end of it. She holds her left arm tightly around her small purse in prudent precaution, its hand full of casino money.
“Yeah. But my name is Michael. What’s yours?”
“Jessica,” she says. “For real. Jessica.” And she smiles.
“What’s so funny?”
She shrugs. “You look familiar.”
“That’s your problem,” he says. “Who do I look like?”
“No one in particular.”
“Maybe I look like someone you want to know,” he says.
“You are forward.”
“What’s a clay man?”
“You don’t know?” she says.
“I’ve heard it before. It’s a religious thing right? We’re all made from clay or something? God the potter. Are you some kind of religious nut?”
“Aren’t you a sweet talker,” she says. “I’m no Bible-thumper. Clay-man is a slang term my friends and I use.”
“How should I know about a slang term you use with your friends?”
“Aren’t you my friend?” she teases.
Michael shakes his head and stirs sugar in his coffee. “This is a weird day,” he says. “You fit right into it.”
“Are you traveling?”
“Aren’t we all?”
She smiles. “Mind if I sit down?”
He stands up and gestures dramatically to a chair.
She sits.
“How’s the burger?”
“Over-rated,” he says.
“That’s not what you told the waitress.”
“You heard that?” He wonders how he hadn’t seen her before. “Yeah, well, I didn’t want to upset her.”
“Why not?”
“Why should I?”
She helps herself to one his fries, one without steak sauce.
“What did you think of that jackpot?” she says.
“Obnoxious. A big show to get others believing they can beat the house.”
“Did you see how they treated her?” she says. “Like she was sudden royalty.”
“So?”
“So, isn’t the class distinction interesting? She won five-hundred dollars. That’s nothing. Do you think they put on that kind of show for a five-hundred dollar swing at the poker table?”
“Different game,” he says.
“But surely the psychology is the same for the rich as the poor. What do they do for the rich man who cleans up?”
“Comp him a room and hope he loses it the next day.”
“Yes. They want that money back, but he’s not paraded as an example to the other rich people as enticement to keep playing. That class is treated differently.”
“There are more than two classes,” says Michael. “What about the middle class?”
“Everyone’s middle class,” she says. “At least we perceive it that way. There are those doing better than us, the rich; and those doing worse than us,
the poor.”
“This is not the conversation I expected.”
She shrugs. “You know how the rich got rich?”
“All of them?”
“Yes, all of them.” She takes another fry.
“I sense a Marxist tirade coming on,” he says. “Let me guess: they got rich by exploiting the working class?”
“They stole it.”
“Stole it?”
“Yes. It’s all stolen.”
“Who’s the rightful owner?”
“Probably no one,” she says. “But anyone who is rich stole to get there.”
“So criminals, since stealing is against the law.”
“Man’s law.”
“No, I think there’s something about it in the Bible.”
She rolls her eyes. “Ever see a raccoon? The little shits will come through your dog door and steal the silverware out of your drawer.”
“What does that prove?”
“There are laws and there are laws,” she says. “Don’t spit on the sidewalk is one kind. Don’t go faster than the speed of light the other. Which one do you think God had a hand in? Stealing is as natural to this planet as sex and violence. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
“That’s a good line.”
“I stole it,” she says.
“You’re a strange girl, Jessica.”
“Woman,” she says. “Don’t be sexist. I want to like you, Michael.”
“Why do you want to like me?”
“You look like someone I should know,” she says taking another French fry.
“Okay, so everything’s stolen. Where does that get us?”
“It gets us some perspective. Once you realize that everything is stolen, once you come to terms with the idea that you have also stolen everything you have, the world is a far clearer place.”
“Some people would claim that they work for the things they have.”
“Sure, they work hard. They work hard at being better thieves. We have nothing of our own. It’s all stolen. Or, if you’d rather, borrowed. If you think of everything as borrowed, it’s clearer still. You can’t get attached to anything if you think it’s borrowed. Well, not as much.”
What Immortal Hand Page 3