Desolation Flats

by Andrew Hunt

  “What about him?”

  “Why was he at your hotel room the other day?”

  “He’s with British military intelligence,” said Heinrich. “My fellow travelers were assisting him in his hunt for Clive.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “If it looks like we sabotaged him in any way, world opinion will turn against us. Besides, Hitler has confidence in the P9’s superiority. He knows it’s the world’s fastest car.”

  I nodded, and I needed a few seconds to take it all in.

  “Look, Heinrich, I’m not after you,” I said. “I don’t have any reason to believe you murdered Nigel. At the same time, I have this funny idea you know more than you’re letting on.” I checked my wristwatch—almost noon. I grew discouraged, and I could not hide it. “I’ll level with you. I’m not a kripo, as you call it.”

  “No?” My words jolted him, I could tell. “Well, what … Who…”

  “I quit my job the other day.”

  “Why are you doing this, then?”

  “I thought I could do some good.” I drew a deep breath. “I guess I was wrong. But thank you for your help. And good luck.”

  I held out my hand. He eyed it briefly then shook it. I left him, cutting across the flats to the tent city and the booming loudspeaker, the flapping banners and newsreel cameras, the bleachers and radio control booth. I returned to my car, parked among scattered vehicles, opened the door and climbed inside. I placed the dossier on the piping-hot passenger side of the front seat, pulled the door closed, and rolled down the window as I fired up the engine.

  While pondered my options, I noticed a slight square bulge in my suit jacket. I reached in my pocket and pulled out a familiar matchbook. I opened it so I could reread the lewd message inside: BEN LOMOND HOTEL, RM 1101. MIDNIGHT. COME FUCK ME. LR. I shook my head to thoughts of that wild woman I encountered out there on the flats moments ago, and mostly I was glad I did not take her up on her offer, though a tiny butterfly of regret fluttered inside of me. I closed the matchbook and examined it. On the front flap was a cute cartoon polar bear. Right below the cuddly, smiling beast, it said:

  ALPINE ICE & STORAGE COMPANY

  WHOLESALE DEALERS OF ICE & BOTTLED BEVERAGES

  REFRIGERATED WAREHOUSES

  REFRIGERATED INDIVIDUAL LOCKER SERVICE

  230 CANYON ROAD EAST, WENDOVER, UTAH

  DIAL WENDOVER 4-4205

  I checked the backside, near the coarse strip where one strikes the match.

  CALL ON US FOR ALL YOUR REFRIGERATION NEEDS!

  I closed my fist around the matchbook.

  At last, I knew where I had to go.

  Thirty-one

  Wendover straddled the Utah-Nevada border. For years, it had been an obscure little railroad outpost in the middle of the desert. Everything changed when the state of Nevada legalized gambling in 1931. That was seven years ago. Since then, Wendover has expanded rapidly into a bustling town full of fancy, air-chilled hotels, shiny new restaurants, and a full-fledged supermarket with wide aisles and canned goods stacked in pyramids. Wendover was a few hours’ drive on the Victory Highway west of Salt Lake City, on the other side of the Bonneville Salt Flats. Each weekend, chartered tour buses would deliver crowds of bright-faced gamblers to the burgh. They’d come with purses jingling with coins and pockets stuffed with wads of bills. They’d usually go home flat-busted broke but filled up with roast beef and liquor or, if they were Mormons, roast beef and ice cream.

  Getting to Wendover involves a straight-line drive across the desert, about thirty minutes west from the Bonneville Salt Flats. High above me, cumulus clouds sailed across the sky like fluffy cotton pirate ships, casting shadows on the salted earth. Even out here, radio signals reached from afar, playing fifteen-minute-long network soap operas filled with overwrought organ music and performers reciting the kind of stilted dialogue one never hears in real life.

  Too preoccupied to listen to soaps, I killed the radio on the last leg of my drive, wondering what I might find at Alpine Ice & Storage. The mere fact that Leni Riefenstahl presented me with the company’s matchbook led me to believe it assumed some significance in the plans of the Germans. Before long, the facility came into view, off to my right. I pulled off the side of the road and skidded to a halt on a big strip of gravel surrounding a series of enormous, dark brown, Quonset-style arched warehouses. I shut off the engine, got out of the car, and headed straight for the front office.

  * * *

  “Lemme see if I’ve got this straight. You work for the state of Utah?”

  Disbelief rang out in the kid’s squeaky, almost pubescent voice. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen. On his head was a red ball cap with its visor pointing up at the ceiling. Pimples dotted his face. A pug nose, beaver front teeth, and an unruly mop of brown hair did little to boost his prospects of finding a date for Saturday night, I’m sure.

  “I’m with the Board of Health,” I said, spreading the lie on thick. I hated lying, but the situation called for it. “That means I answer to the governor.”

  As I spoke, I surveyed the room. On wood-paneled walls hung signs for nearly every major brand of soda pop and beer imaginable. In the middle of it all was a 1938 calendar advertising a Chinese food joint down the street, accentuated with multicolored dragons. A Bakelite radio played a rebroadcast of the previous day’s ballgame: Cleveland Indians versus St. Louis Browns, brought to you by sparkling Dr Pepper. Bottom of the fifth. Cleveland down by two. I knew the outcome. That killed the tension.

  On the counter sat a small box containing books of matches advertising the Alpine Ice & Storage Company, just like the one Leni Riefenstahl gave me that day at the Salt Flats. I smiled at the sight of the sweet little cartoon polar bear on each one.

  “Ain’t you got some identification?”

  “Why don’t you call the governor’s office?” I said. “He’ll vouch for me.”

  “Governor?”

  “Look, I wish I could stand here all day and chew the cud about procedures,” I said. “But I’ve got a doozy of a schedule to contend with. Can we make it snappy?”

  “Tell me again what it is you want, mister,” he said.

  “I’m crisscrossing the state, inspecting refrigeration storage facilities,” I said. “There’s been an outbreak of poisonous bacteria along the Wasatch Front. People have been hospitalized. One lady even died. The department has traced the culprit back to bad ice. Seems somebody got careless with the temperature settings and didn’t handle the product properly. It’s my job to make sure companies across the state are adhering to proper refrigeration codes. That goes for this one, too.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Proper what?”

  “The temperature inside of a refrigerator belonging to a licensed business is required to be set to thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit, no warmer than forty, because bacteria sets in at forty-one,” I said. “Freezers should be adjusted to a range between minus ten and plus ten degrees, to prevent spoilage in meat and other frozen goods. Failure to adhere to these rules will be met with a fine and or jail time, and possible confiscation of said equipment.”

  He swallowed hard at the mention of jail time.

  “Like I said before, mister, my manager isn’t here,” said the kid. “In fact, Mr. Gulbranson doesn’t even live in Wendover. He’s from Provo.”

  “Gulbranson, huh?” I asked, jotting his name on a clipboard form, which I’d swiped from the vacant radio room at the Bonneville Raceway. I thought it would make me look more official. “First name?”

  “George,” said the kid. “George P. Gulbranson. I think the P is for Palmer.”

  “And what’s your name again?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Official business,” I said. “Plus I find it helps—forgive the pun—to break the ice if I learn other people’s names.”

  “Willis Edmonds,” he said. “I go by Willie. Hey, you gonna stick it to my boss?”

  “Not if he’s heeding regul
ations, sonny,” I said. “It’s actually a good thing he’s not here. I find that owners get needlessly antsy when I’m giving their place of business a good going-over. So tell me something.”

  “Sure. Anything.”

  “It looks like Mr. Gulbranson is doing pretty well for himself,” I said. “Who are his clients?”

  “You’d be amazed at how many people need cold things out in the middle of the desert,” said Willie. “You know, soft drinks, beer, spirits, dairy products, meats, frozen novelty treats, bags of ice. We service the hotels, the big I.G.A. down the street, all the little roadside markets, and a bunch of local customers. Mr. Gulbranson even rents space out here, too. The man rakes in some handsome profits, enough to buy a hunting lodge up in Wyoming.”

  “A whole hunting lodge huh? Look at that,” I said, making a tsch sound out the side of my mouth.

  “Hey, mister?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you actually arrested anybody for peddling bad ice?” he asked.

  “You’d be surprised,” I said. “The state penitentiary is packed with fellows who thought the rules only applied to others.”

  My words spooked the lad. “Jeepers. All that for making bum ice?”

  “Listen, sonny,” I said, “if you just hand me the keys to these warehouses, I’ll go take a gander on my own. All I have to do is take a peek at the temperature inside of each one and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  Off a wall hook near that Chinese restaurant calendar, he plucked a master key ring with six keys on it and handed it to me.

  “They’re numbered, to correspond with each building,” he said. “They unlock the rear entrances. I figured that’s the best way to get inside. To save yourself some time, you can just skip warehouse six.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What’s in it?”

  “The Germans rented it out,” he said.

  “Germans?”

  “Yeah, they forked over a pretty penny for it, and demanded the whole thing to themselves.” He leaned across the counter and spoke softly. “They’re real private. Queer as all get-out. They come and go as they please, at all hours. I’ve only seen ’em two, three times. Of course, when I’m alone here in the front office, I play the music and ballgames loud, so I don’t hear much of anything outside. “

  “What do you suppose they’re keeping in there?” I whispered.

  “Beats me,” he said. “They’ve been mighty secretive about it, whatever it is.”

  I nodded and wiggled the jingling keys. “So skip number six, you’re saying?”

  “If you wanna save time,” he said.

  “That I do, sonny,” I said. “Thank you for the tip.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Back soon,” I said.

  “I’ll ‘hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch,’” he said, quoting Longfellow.

  “‘One if by land, and two if by sea,’” I said, finishing the line.

  “‘Paul Revere’s Ride,’” he said. “Did you have to read it in English, too?”

  “In my day the course was called Poetics,” I said. “And we had to commit it to memory. See you soon, sonny.”

  “I’ll be here when you’re done.”

  * * *

  To the west, a thunderstorm churned. Ominous clouds hovered low in the sky and sailed toward us. Webbing bolts, so bright they burned into your vision when you closed your eyes, shot out of the heavens, dancing on the desert floor. Rarely did it ever rain in bone-dry Wendover. Right now, however, darkening skies threatened to open up with a downpour. I had to move fast. I went from warehouse to warehouse, opening back doors, peering inside, and jotting gibberish on my clipboard forms before moving on, in case the kid was looking out the window at me. I crossed a stretch of gravel, reaching the sixth warehouse, where the Germans were staying.

  I slid the diamond-shaped key with a white number 6 on it into the lock, turned it, unlocked the door, and placed a stone against the frame to prevent it from latching shut while I was gone. Next, I jogged back over to the front office, housed in a flat-topped brick box with arched windows. I threw open the front door, dropped the keys on the counter, and muttered a hasty “good-bye, and thanks.”

  “That’s all?” asked Willie.

  “I’m done.”

  “That didn’t take long.”

  “Like I said, I’m on a tight schedule.”

  “So. Is he in trouble?” asked Willie.

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Gulbranson.” When the name did not register with me for a second, he shot me an incredulous look. “My boss.”

  “Oh. Him? Naw. He gets a clean bill of health.”

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “Disappointed?” I asked.

  “I don’t mind a good fireworks show, long as it don’t poke my eye out.”

  I chuckled. “Later days, kid.”

  “So long, mister.”

  I returned to the dry heat of outdoors to ponder my next move. The clouds above furnished only slight relief. Earlier, when I arrived here, I’d parked my car up the road half a mile, behind a billboard for a local casino hotel. I figured it’d be safe in that spot, in case any unanticipated problems should arise. Presently, I had to find out what was in warehouse six. I moved briskly toward it, creeping inside the back door and kicking away the stone that’d been propping it open. I pressed a button on the wall and a trio of electric bulbs above my head went on, bathing the area in light. I found myself in a narrow corridor. I pulled the back door closed behind me. The temperature plunged to somewhere in the upper 30s or low 40s. I walked to the end of the corridor, where a smaller second door awaited. I turned the knob and opened it.

  I slipped inside a freezing room of gigantic proportions. Poorly lit. Thirty-foot-high ceiling. I exhaled steam. A refrigeration system hummed, and air from giant fans almost blew my hat off. I opted against switching on the overhead floodlights, which I could tell would be bright. Instead, I relied on the little bit of light spilling in from the corridor behind me and the few glowing bulbs above me.

  I instantly found what I was looking for. Parked in the center of the room, facing a set of double doors, the long Mercedes-Benz P9 appeared as a silver ghost, with its front tires concealed under rounded fenders, and its four rear wheels encased in long tailfins. Its wings spread outward like those of a diving bird, and it gave off a mixed scent of rubber and oil and freshly painted parts. The swastika emblem on the side was cold to the touch. I stood next to twenty-six feet of chilled, aerodynamic machinery, one of the greatest automotive engineering feats of the twentieth century, admiring it and its matching reflection gleaming in the polished concrete floor.

  It made sense, storing the P9—a car more suited to a cooler, mountainous region—in a frigid place with a controlled climate. Out here, in this desert, even the most robust of cars could take a beating, and the Germans did not want to take any risks. I stepped away from the car and scanned the room. Something in the shadows on the other side of the room caught my eye. I went closer, for a better look. Eight movie cameras attached to tripods stood in a neat row. A familiar diamond-shaped UFA logo on the side of each camera reminded me of my first meeting with Leni Riefenstahl, while she was shooting her documentary. The Germans undoubtedly planned on scoring a great victory this Saturday, and they assigned a high priority to capturing it on film. In addition to the cameras, a large Moviola editing device sat atop a wooden table, and a movie projector with a reel of film threaded into it was aimed at a portable screen. I’d worked a projector before, back when I had a job in a local movie theater. I hit the ON switch, the sprockets rattled, the reel turned, and light flickered onto the screen. Black-and-white images of the P9 whizzing across the Salt Flats filled the screen, with a shrill, nasally male narrating in German, a language I could not understand. I switched off the projector, walked over to the cameras, peeked through a viewfinder. All I could see was blackness.

  I backed away from the camera and shifted my focus to on
e of those wide and thick freezer doors on the wall, as white as the fallen snow, with a chrome handle. When I opened it, a wall of icy cold blew in my face. It was pitch-black inside. No windows in here. I reached in and switched on a set of lights. The whole room lit up. Dangling meat hooks and smaller storage freezers filled all parts of the freezer. Right then, I heard distant movement—the sound of car brakes squealing outside, followed by slamming doors. I shut off the freezer lights, slipped out the door and closed it.

  Thirty-two

  In the frigid darkness of the warehouse, the tinted P9 cockpit dome beckoned.

  Sprinting over to it, I almost tripped over a canvas tarp spread out on the ground. I scrambled up the side, gripping a handle below the base of the dome and giving it a firm tug. The covering hissed upward like an alligator’s snout opening, and when it was high enough, I dove into a black leather seat facing a maroon steering wheel. Once inside, I lifted my arms and pulled the dome down. It snapped in place, but was not all the way closed because a thin strip of light shone through the base. I was about to pull it down harder when a pair of men strode out of the shadows. I drew a deep breath, easing lower into the seat so I had just enough height to peer through the bottom of the dome at the ghostly silhouettes coming closer, their faces shrouded in darkness. They soon stepped into the dim glow of the bulbs hanging overhead. The men faced each other, and the yellowish light from above illuminated the faces of Dr. Hans Meinshausen, attired for a long Bavarian winter in a matching Homburg hat and dark suit, and Julian Pangborn, in a baggy three-piecer much too big for him and frayed around the lapels, and a battered brown fedora.

  Both men raised arms in heil Hitler salutes, and exchanged handshakes.

  “Thank you for coming all this way out here, Julian,” said Meinshausen. “Tell me, are any of your fellow Englishmen aware you’re here?”

  “Nein,” said Julian, now sounding very German. “Ich niemanden erzählt.”

  “In English,” said Meinshausen. “Please.”

  Julian began speaking with flawless BBC diction. “I came alone. I told no one.”