Eve's Men

by Newton Thornburg

  “God, I don’t know why you’re so pigheaded,” she said. “I told you not to go out there.”

  “So you did. I guess I’ll never learn.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Good-bye, Donna.”

  When Ray Henley finally called, Charley briefed him on his predicament and what he wanted him to do. Ten minutes later a local criminal attorney phoned Charley and they made an appointment to meet at three o’clock at the county building, where they would discuss what Charley soon thereafter would be saying in his statement to the DA.

  After hanging up, Charley gathered his aching body, all six ravaged feet of it, and dragged himself into the bathroom to wash up. He also washed down a couple of aspirin tablets, which in his stomach immediately turned into hot coals.

  He wanted desperately to lie back down and sleep for a few hours, or at least until the meeting with the lawyer. But he knew he had to get back to Brian and keep him focused, carry him down to the police station if he had to. So, reluctantly, he left his room finally and went back there—only to find the door ajar and the room empty. The dresser drawers had been pulled open and all the clothes and luggage and personal items were gone. As were Brian and Eve.

  Eve had reclined the seat so far she couldn’t have seen out even if she had wanted to, which she did not, since the West always looked pretty much the same to her from thirty thousand feet: a vast tan emptiness with occasional stretches of pale lavender mountains and huge, green irrigation circles. She still had not changed clothes from the day before, was still wearing the same jeans and sleeveless jersey blouse that she had worn to the Purple Sage, and which had made her scoot as far from Charley as she could get on their way up to Jolly’s in the pickup. Now, though, stretched out in the chartered jet, she hoped that she had developed at least a modicum of body odor as an appropriate little gift for her seatmate: Brian the fugitive, Brian the bugout.

  At first she had refused to go, telling him that she would not be a party to such madness, helping him jump bail and add to his crimes, not to mention leaving Charley holding the bag. But Brian had trumped her, nodding sympathetically, saying that he understood and even agreed with her.

  “Yeah, I guess it’s high time you cut yourself loose from me. All I’m doing is dragging you down with me, and you deserve better than that. Really, baby, I understand.”

  And for a short time she had stood by and watched him pack, tossing and stuffing his things into their suitcases. But the thought of the two of them parting so abruptly after so long a time together was simply too much for her to handle, and she soon joined him, hurriedly packing her things right in with his. And this made her even angrier, the fact that her loyalty to him came at such a price: not only turning her into a lawbreaker but forcing her to betray Charley as well.

  As they were about to leave, she asked Brian about the bail money, how on earth he could justify letting his brother suffer such a loss, and he assured her that would not happen. He said that either he would return in time, once Chester was on the hook for the shooting, or he would simply repay Charley out of the contract money.

  Eve still was amazed at how smoothly Brian had handled the getaway, almost as if he had expected it to happen and had had time to prepare for it. Hiding behind dark glasses and a Chicago Bears baseball cap, he had led her down the back stairs, away from both Charley’s room and the front desk. A short distance from the motel he stopped at a pay phone and arranged for a taxi to pick them up at a nearby mall. Back in the truck, he handed her his flight bag and had her take ten thousand dollars out of it, explaining that he wanted her to do all the talking and arranging from then on. He would be her backward brother, a dolt obediently tagging along.

  He dropped her off, along with the luggage, just north of the main entrance to the mall. Then he parked the truck way out on the fringe of the huge parking lot and walked back to where she was, arriving only a few minutes before the taxi. Following his instructions, she had the driver take them to the airport, which was about twenty minutes away. South of the terminal, Eve went alone into the tiny office of a private air service and told the clerk that she and her brother wanted to charter a jet to Santa Barbara.

  “As soon as possible,” she added.

  Before the clerk could answer, a man coming out of the room behind her emitted a sharp laugh and said, “How about immediately, if not sooner?”

  He was chunky and middle-aged, with a florid face and an outfit that proclaimed him self-employed: khakis, a Peanuts sweat shirt, and a tan, well-crushed captain’s cap. He told Eve that they’d had a cancellation that morning and had a Lear jet “all fueled and ready to go.” Flying time would be two and a quarter hours and the cost would be seventy-one hundred dollars, cash or credit card. As Eve brought forth her stack of hundreds and began counting out the fare, the man laughed again, this time a touch nervously.

  “Well, it’s sure nice doing business with you, miss,” he said. “My name’s Ted Horne. I’ll be your pilot.”

  Very soon after that they were airborne, banking and climbing above the Colorado plains before turning back and streaking west over the front range, with Pike’s Peak no more than a molehill far below. And now, well on their way, Eve was discovering that even though she hated what they were doing, she was grateful for the sudden peace and quiet, the chance to lie back in the plush, cozy cylinder of the Lear jet and try to relax, maybe even sleep. But as she lay there with her eyes closed, she heard Brian twisting in his seat and then felt his breath lightly brushing her face. Opening her eyes, she found herself looking straight into his eyes not even a foot away.

  “What do you want?” she snapped. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  He smiled ruefully. “Oh, I was just thinking—how lucky I am to have you. Or to have had you, I guess I should say. After all this, I imagine you’ll be moving on pretty soon, don’t you think?”

  “That again, huh?”

  “You mean back in the motel? Well, I guess it’s on my mind. I guess I know I’ve gone too far. That I deserve to lose you.”

  “Well, you do put one to the test.”

  “I know.” He paused there a moment, still smiling thoughtfully. “Charley,” he went on. “You really liked him, didn’t you?”

  “Sure. And so should you. I really hate it, running out on him like this. Leaving him holding the bag.”

  “I know. I do too. I really do, babe. But I just couldn’t stay. After that one night in jail—on top of the year in Mexico—I found out I just can’t cut it anymore. I’d go crazy. And I honestly don’t feel I deserve it. Belinda was an accident. And Chester shooting Jolly, I never even considered it a possibility. I really didn’t. And as for the bulldozing, that was for good reason—you know it was. A guy shouldn’t have to just accept it, those bastards taking your life and turning it into shit for all the world to see. Yet they will if I don’t stop them. They’re the ones who should be behind bars, not me.”

  Eve did not feel like discussing it all yet again. “Let me sleep, okay?”

  “Sure.” But he was looking at her in that special way he had, his lovely, muscular face somehow deprecating himself while romancing her at the same time, admiring her, appealing to her.

  “I’ll cuddle to you, okay?” he said. “I’ll hold you while you sleep.”

  “All right. But that’s all.”

  “Of course. What else?”

  As she rolled over, he pushed up the armrests between them and moved in tightly against her, Levi’s to Levi’s, his arm around her, his hand cupping her right breast. Through her jersey blouse and lightweight bra she could feel her nipples hardening—until he suddenly let go of her. She felt him fussing with his jeans, probably rearranging himself. Then he came back, putting his arm around her again and pressing in tight.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I’m not preparing to rape you, just giving Mister Big a little more elbow room.”

  It had been his name for it in the beginning, a jest at his own expense. But i
n point of fact, it was a pretty fair moniker. In bed or elsewhere, as they set about making love, she often would slip down and inquire as to the subject’s welfare. “And how is Mister Big tonight?”

  At the moment, though, rest and sleep were still her priorities. And she reminded him.

  “Sleep, remember?” she said.

  “Of course. No problem. This is fine.”

  And so it was. Drifting, half-asleep, she could feel him hard against her buttocks. And she thought how delicious it would be if she did in fact fall asleep this way, with him holding her and the world so far below, out of sight, out of mind. But her nipples refused to join her in sleep, and in time she took hold of his hand and guided it under her blouse and bra, the touch of his fingers on her breasts as usual jumping like an electric current straight to her pubis. He began kissing her on the neck and nibbling her ear, and soon she turned in his embrace and the two of them began to kiss in earnest, their hands moving into the other’s jeans.

  As they hustled out of their clothes, Eve glanced over at the cockpit door to make sure it was drawn tight. Then she slipped down onto her knees and took him in her mouth, feeling his hands as they combed back into her hair and cupped her head, moving as she moved. Brian had brought his seat back up partially, and she knew that soon he would reach down and lift her onto his lap, his fingers digging into her buttocks while he buried his face in her breasts. And she would feel it all coming closer and closer, that time of loveliness and terror that bound her to him like a rope of pearls.

  After returning to his room, Charley was at a loss for what to do. He knew he had information that the police could have used, such as the fact that Chester Einhorn was in all likelihood the killer—or at least the shooter—of Damian Jolly. Also, the police undoubtedly would have liked to know that Brian to all appearances had jumped bail and was on the run.

  On the one hand, Charley knew that withholding this information even temporarily might be construed by the police or the district attorney’s office as obstruction of justice. On the other, he knew it would be recklessly stupid of him to go to the police without a lawyer at his side, someone looking out for his interests and no one else’s. So his decision was, as the cool people said, a no-brainer. He would wait till three o’clock.

  Meanwhile he wanted very much to talk to someone about it all, what a lovely fix his little brother had gotten him into. He considered phoning Donna again and telling her about Brian’s latest jape, but he knew that would only set her off again, at his expense as much as Brian’s. That left the bed, the almost sexual appeal of getting in an hour’s nap before leaving for the courthouse. But he was afraid that once he dropped off, he would sleep through Armageddon, let alone a bedside alarm. So he elected to freshen up, to shower again and put on a clean shirt and the tan Armani, the only suit he had brought with him. Though he didn’t particularly like the idea, he knew that the police were prone to go easier on men who came in wearing a good suit instead of a workshirt and dirty khakis. And he wasn’t Brian; he didn’t like to stack the deck against himself.

  At about two-fifteen he was getting ready to leave, just then putting on his jacket when there was a knock on the door. Thinking it might be Brian and Eve, overcome with guilt and ready to face the music, he opened the door. And there stood Chester Einhorn, carrying what appeared to be a bag of groceries. Though it crossed Charley’s mind to slam the door in the little man’s face, he found himself stepping aside and letting him come on in. As the door closed behind him, Chester reached into the paper sack and drew out not a loaf of bread or a can of corn but a blue-barreled pistol so huge it looked like a cannon in his hard little fist as he raised it now and pointed it at Charley.

  “Where’s your brother?” he asked.

  Charley couldn’t take his eyes off the gun. As if by magic, it had loosened his bowels and weakened his knees and sucked the air out of his lungs. He could barely speak. “I don’t know. He took off, that’s all I know. I drank pretty late last night and just got up. I—”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “If I knew I’d tell you, believe me. He just took off. Jumped bail even. I can’t figure it.”

  Chester stood there looking up at him, eyes squinting and lipless mouth curved in the wraith of a smile. Then, abruptly, he cocked the gun—to Charley, a sound uncomfortably like that of a breaking bone. By then his hands were shaking badly.

  “Seattle,” he got out. “I think he went to Seattle.”

  “You think?”

  “No, I’m sure. That’s what he said. He’s got an old friend up there. Lives aboard a boat called the Seagull.”

  “Seagull?”

  “Yes—plain old Seagull.”

  “What’s this fella’s name?”

  “I don’t know. I remember Brian talking about him a few times, but I don’t remember his name. Brian said they go way back, the two of them. Real buddies.”

  “And you’re his brother. So how come you rat on him?”

  Charley looked at the gun. “Why do you think?”

  Chester appeared satisfied with that. “Makes sense.” He uncocked the gun and motioned with it for Charley to move. “Okay, git yer stuff together. We goin’ on a little trip, the two of us.”

  “We are?”

  “Yep, we sure are.”

  “Seattle?”

  “That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”

  Charley was furiously trying to think of something he could do: go for the gun, jump off the balcony, pretend to faint. Only the last seemed feasible, but in the end he couldn’t even bring himself to do that. He opened his suitcase and began to throw into it the few things he had bothered to unpack.

  “Yessir, that brother of yers, he shore is a card,” Chester said. “But we gonna find him, and he’s gonna learn a thing or two, he damn well is. So hurry up, will ya?”

  Charley didn’t answer. But he was hurrying.

  An hour later Charley had reached the point where he would almost have preferred being shot by Chester rather than have to listen to one more minute of the man’s nasal drone as he expounded on his dreary philosophy of life. In the beginning, though, as Charley drove Chester’s bright red pickup out of Colorado Springs and headed north for Denver, he had been an avid listener to everything the little man had to say, beginning with the welcome news that Jolly hadn’t been killed after all, that it was not his head but his hairpiece that had been blown away as the bullet apparently glanced off his skull. That glancing, however, had cracked bone and caused the director a blood clot on the brain, which had required immediate surgery.

  Incredibly, Chester’s greatest concern about the shooting seemed to be his aim, the fact that he had not blown off Jolly’s head.

  “I jest cain’t figger it,” he lamented. “That two-seventy of mine is mostly a real right-on weapon. Hell, I’ve hit turkey vultures with that dang rifle—and I mean when they’s flyin’. You try doin’ that sometime, buster, you’ll find out it ain’t so easy. Only way I can figger it is this dang Colorado air—itchy, lip-crackin’ shit! A body cain’t hardly breathe, you know that? And I jest figger that’s what the trouble was up to Jolly’s place. I jest bet the air was so dang thin it probly jest lifted that li’l old bullet a smidgen off dead center. Cuz I had the hairs right on him, believe you me, I did—right twixt his snotty fag eyes. Him posin’ up there in his goddamn sissy robe.”

  Charley didn’t comment on any of this, mostly out of fear that he would say the wrong thing and set Chester off, and that was not something he wanted to do. Also, Charley sensed that though the tiny cowboy’s main reason for dragging him along might have been to birddog Brian, he probably needed him equally as an ear, someone to whom he could pour out his mad little heart for hours on end.

  Every now and then, however, he would drop a random pearl of information, such as his casual explanation of how he had found out that Brian had lied to him—by hearing it from the one person who knew, Belinda herself, who had come out of her coma with her memory s
ufficiently intact to recall that she had been with Brian, not Jolly, on the night of the accident. Fortunately for Charley, she apparently had no recollection of the accident itself and had told Chester only about being with Brian in his motel room at the Goodland and innocently taking the pills he had given her—for her upset stomach, she had told Chester—this last most likely an invention on her part in order to maintain her image before her big brother as a pure and wholesome country girl debauched by a known drug fiend. Chester said he then had cautioned her not to tell the police or anyone else about Brian because he wanted to take care of that little matter himself.

  “Yessir, I jest told her to lay back and not worry her purty head about anythin’ ’cept gittin’ on her feet again. She’s got my ma and cousin Lil with her, so I jest told her to fergit all about Brian Poole cuz Chester Einhorn was gonna take care of him. And by Jesus, that’s jest what I’m gonna do. My pa and uncle can handle the ranch or the dang thing can jest go to seed—I don’t give a shit one way or t’other. Alls I care about is runnin’ that brother of yers to ground and havin’ him suck on this for a while.” At which point he waggled the three fifty-seven magnum in Charley’s face. “Let him get a real good taste of it—that’s all I want.”

  Then he chuckled and shook his head fondly, like an old man gossiping on a park bench. “That old Brian, though, you gotta hand it to him, you know that? He’s really some piece of work, he is. What a card! Gettin’ me to do his dirty work like he done, and damn near makin’ me like it too. He’s some kinda charmer, all right. Hell, old Brian, he could charm the birds right down outa the trees if he’d a mind to, and that’s a fack.”

  “So why not drop all this?” Charley suggested. “Jolly wasn’t killed. And Brian didn’t call the law in on you. He just split. You’re in the clear.”