"Now wait a minute, man," Bad Dog said, his voice shaking.
"Again, my apologies. You're both victims of circumstance more than any anything else, but I feel responsible for you all the same. Rest assured I'll try to be a better judge of character in the future." He turned to Phil and said, "Make it quick."
Then he walked away.
Left alone to do the dirty work, Phil smiled at Dog and me and said, "Don't worry, folks. This isn't going to hurt a bit. I'm a professional."
With that, I closed my eyes and waited to die.
And waited.
And waited.
But nothing happened. The gun didn't go pop, the pain didn't come, my heart didn't slam to a stop. Time merely stood still, marred only by sound. The sound of some kind of struggle.
I opened my eyes again.
And there stood Dozer Meadows, pinning Phil to the trunk of a tree with one hand clamped tight over the smaller man's throat. Even in the dim moonlight, I could see Phil's eyes getting bigger and his face turning an unsettling shade of some undetermined color. The gun was still in his right hand, however, and he appeared to be fighting with everything he had to raise it from his side up to where Meadows's menacing face loomed.
"Put the gun down, man," Meadows advised him.
But Phil wouldn't listen.
"I'm warnin' you, man. Put the gun down, all right? Right now!"
Again Phil chose to ignore the order. The gun rose another fraction of an inch in his hand, and Meadows saw it.
Without another word, the big man lifted Phil over his head and tossed him into the Canyon. I felt something fly over my shoulder, and then I heard the screams.
I thought the echoes would never die.
10
"Mrs. Loudermilk, my name is Alex Medavoy."
He was a handsome young man in a very bland way, tall but not thin, dark-haired and clean-shaven. Clean-shaven to the point of being glossy-cheeked, in fact. His dark blue suit fit, but did not excite; ditto for his crisp white shirt and burgundy tie. His cologne was wholly unmemorable.
He was an FBI man, he said. I would have never guessed.
We were sitting in Ranger Cooper's office, a by now all too familiar setting for me, but Cooper was not in the room with us. I'd been sitting here now for almost an hour, alone, expecting the ranger to come in and ask me all the questions that needed to be asked about the circumstances of Phil the cameraman's death, but in had walked Mr. Medavoy instead. He sat down in the chair beside me not the one behind Cooper's desk, mind you, but the one right at my left elbow—showed me his ID, and then watched as I nearly lost my lunch all over his lap.
The Feds!
"You look pale. Should I get you some water?"
"No, no, no." I shook my head and took a deep breath. ''I'm okay. It's just that… all this excitement…"
"Of course. You've been through quite a bit tonight. I understand. We'll try to make this as brief as possible, all right?"
I nodded and said, "Please."
He smiled. "Wonderful. We'll start with something simple. Mrs. Loudermilk, do you have any idea who the two men were who accosted you and your son this evening?"
"They said their names were Ray and Phil. They told us they were newspaper reporters."
"And you believed that?"
"No. I didn't."
"And why was that?"
"Because they didn't act like reporters. They didn't look like reporters. And they had guns and Instamatic cameras. "
Medavoy raised an eyebrow. "Instamatic cameras? I don't understand."
I told him about the toy camera Phil had been carrying around when we first met him.
"Oh. I see," Medavoy said, grinning. "Then they never told you who they really were."
"No. Who were they?"
"Just a pair of hoods from back east. Musclemen out of St. Louis. Their real names aren't important. What is important is that you managed to make their acquaintance without getting badly hurt. "lost of the people those two have bumped into over the years weren't that lucky, I'm afraid. "
"You mean they were hired killers? For the mob?"
"It'd be more accurate to say they were couriers, Mrs. Loudermilk. Capable of killing, yes, but that ,vas not their area of expertise. I venture to say, you and your son Theodore would be dead by now if it had been. In all probability, Mr. Meadows as well."
That water he had tried to offer me a moment earlier was starting to sound pretty good; my tongue was beginning to feel like that of a camel, an hour removed from safari.
"Where is Ray now?" I asked, curious. The last time I'd seen him, he'd been sprawled out facedown on the walk path where Dozer Meadows had dropped him, looking a good deal like a fresh corpse waiting for the coroner's wagon to stop by.
"He's at the medical station here, getting patched up," Medavoy said. "Meadows broke his jaw in three places and moved his nose to a different spot on his face. He looks like hell, but I'm told he'll survive."
"Thank God." I was, again, hearing Phil's terrified voice diminish into the Canyon. I wondered if I always would.
"You're pretty lucky the big man came along when he did," Medavoy said. "Yes. We are."
"I would have preferred to have Colletta—excuse me, Phil—alive too, but it sounds like he gave Meadows no choice but to do what he did to him."
I recognized this as a question, not a comment, so I said, "That's true. Phil wouldn't put down the gun, so…" I was unable to finish the sentence.
"I understand. It was self-defense."
"Yes."
Medavoy nodded his head, satisfied. "Well. Enough of that. Let's push on, shall we?"
I waited for him to do so.
"Good. Let's talk about the kind of questions Ray and Phil asked you. All right? Tell me what they said they wanted to know, exactly."
"They wanted to know if Mr. Bettis had told us anything about somebody named Philly Gee before he died. They seemed to be interested in finding out where this Philly Gee person, whoever he is, was hiding. That's what they said, 'hiding.'"
"And did you tell them?"
"What?"
"Did you tell them where this Filly Gee was hiding?"
"No." I was confused by the question. "We don't know any Philly Gee. Who in the world is Philly Gee?"
"Then Mr. Bettis really was dead when you found him. He never actually spoke to you, about Filly Gee, about anything."
"No. He was dead. Conversation between the living and the dead is very minimal, Mr. Medavoy. That's because dead people don't do much talking, and they don't listen very well either. They're a lot like policemen, in that respect."
"I'm sorry if this is overly familiar territory for you, Mrs. Loudermilk, but these questions have to be asked."
I just answered his apology with silence.
"Did either Ray or Phil admit to killing Mr. Bettis in your trailer?"
"No."
"Did they ever ask you if you knew who might have killed him?"
"Not that I recall. Didn't the man they have in jail down in Flagstaff kill Mr. Bettis?"
"If you don't mind, Mrs. Loudermilk, we'll leave all the questions for me to ask, okay?"
''I'm sorry. I just wondered—"
"While we're on the subject of Flagstaff—why did you and your family drive down there this morning?"
"To pick up our trailer from the sheriff's station. They had taken her down there to run some lab tests on her, and when they said we could have her back, we decided to go down and get her ourselves. Why?"
"And that's all you did while you were down there? Pick up your trailer from the sheriff's station?"
"Well…"
I could tell from the look on his face that he already knew the answer to his question. And as if to prove it, he opened the manila envelope he'd been holding in his lap and handed me a set of eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs.
"These were taken in Flagstaff this afternoon, Mrs. Loudermilk. Maybe you can tell me what they mean."
They were all candid shots of Joe, Dog, and me, first at Geoffry Bettis's home, then up at the vacant lot that had been 505 West Fir, where we were joined in a couple of shots by Dozer Meadows. In other words, it was a virtual expose of three amateur detectives caught in the act of butting in where they don't belong. It was embarrassing, to say the least. So this, I thought to myself, was what Bad Dog always meant when his father and I would get the goods on him and he'd mumble two words dejectedly under his breath:
Stone busted.
Needless to say, I came clean again. What else could I do? Dog wasn't here to show me how to lie effectively, and I was getting a little too good at that for my tastes, anyway, so I went with the honest approach. They always say on TV that if you cooperate with the authorities, they'll go easy on you. Of course, they also say Listerine kills the germs that cause bad breath.
Medavoy remained unnervingly quiet after I had stopped talking. I tried to read his eyes for some clue to my fate, but he kept them turned away from me. Deliberately, I thought.
"Am I in trouble?" I asked him when I couldn't take his silence any longer.
"That all depends," he said, sounding grim.
"On what?"
"On whether or not you've told me everything. If you've been holding anything back, if you've neglected to tell me anything at all—"
"I haven't. I've told you everything I know, believe me."
He got quiet again, but this time he made a point of allowing me to see his eyes. "You really don't know who Filly Gee is?"
"No. I really don't." I shook my head until I thought it was going to fly off.
"And you'd never seen the man in Bettis's photographs before? Here in the park, or anywhere else?"
"No. Never."
"What about your husband, or your son Theodore? Could they have recognized him, do you think?"
"No. They'd never seen him before either. He was a stranger to all of us, I'm certain of it."
Medavoy sighed, slapped his thigh, and said, "All right then, Mrs. Loudermilk. In that case, I only have one more question for you. Think you can handle that?" He smiled his J. Edgar Hoover game show host smile at me again.
"Sure. I don't see why not."
He pulled another eight-by-ten from his envelope and handed it to me. "Tell me. Have you ever seen this woman before? Around the park here, or maybe even down in Flagstaff somewhere?"
She was stepping into the back seat of a taxi. She wore a white cotton dress cut well above the knee, form-fitting and designed for show, and a matching, large-brimmed white hat that washed her face in deep shadow. A mane of what appeared to be golden-yellow hair spilled out of the hat and fell softly to her shoulders; you could almost smell the sweet scent of soap in it, it looked so clean and well kept.
I'd never seen the lady before, and I told Medavoy so.
"Who is she? Mrs. Philly Gee?" I asked him.
He took all the photographs from my hands and said, "You might call her that." He seemed to want to say more, but he didn't.
That was just fine by me.
"Well, that's it," he said simply. "If I can think of any more questions to ask you later, Mrs. Loudermilk, I'll see you in the morning out at the trailer park before you leave. Otherwise, this is good-bye. And thank you." He reached out and shook my hand; then he walked me to the door.
"You aren't going to tell me what this was all about?" I asked, more than a little naively.
"No ma'am. It'd be best for all concerned if I didn't. You'll just have to trust me on that."
"But if Ray and Phil were really the ones who killed Mr. Bettis—"
"I never suggested that they were. I merely asked you if they ever implicated themselves in Mr. Bettis's murder, and you assured me that they did not."
"Yes, but—"
"Mrs. Loudermilk. Please. Everything is under control here, I promise you. So relax."
He put his hand on my shoulder with one hand and opened the door with the other. I was tempted to hold my ground just to illustrate how little I cared for being treated so condescendingly, but I knew there'd be no point. He had told me all he was going to. and nothing was going to change that.
"All right, Mr. Medavoy," I said. "I guess I'll just have to trust you. as you say."
"Yes rna'am."
"But do me a favor, will you? Please don't come looking for me in the morning. As tired as I am right now, I plan to sleep in until noon tomorrow, at least. You want to talk to me, come by anytime after one. I should be fine by then."
I laughed, but Medavoy let me do it all by myself.
"I'm afraid you misunderstand. You'll be leaving in the morning, as I said. Bright and early."
"Excuse me?"
"What I'm trying to say here, .Mrs. Loudermilk, is that if you and your family aren't off the park grounds by nine-thirty tomorrow morning, I'll have you arrested and charged with obstruction of justice. Among other things. Do you get my meaning, ma'am?"
The smile on his face now was not the same one he'd shown me earlier. This one had teeth in it. The sharp, serrated kind of teeth great white sharks like to use to slit open their prey before devouring the intestines in one bite.
I told the FBI man I got his meaning, and made fast tracks for Lucille.
* * * *
"I don't like this," I said, one more time.
I wasn't keeping count, but Bad Dog apparently was. "You've said that a hundred times, Moms. 'I don't like this.' 'I don't like this.' 'I don't like this.' Man, change the recording already, please."
"That's 'record,' " Big Joe said.
"What?"
"The expression is 'change the record.' Not 'the recording.' "
"Oh. Like in 'world record,' huh?"
"No. Like in 'broken record.' A musical record, a forty-five or an LP."
"Ah, I gotcha."
"Only this record's got a scratch on it, so the needle's always jumpin' backward and playin' the same thing over an' over again. 'I don't like this, brippp, I don't like this, brippp, I don't like this, brippp—' "
"All right, all right," I said, bouncing a palm off the side of my husband's head. "I get the point. You want me to shut up, I'll shut up." I gave them both a chance to actually say it—Shut up—but neither man took the bait. "But I don't like what we're doing here, and neither do you. It just doesn't feel right."
We were on our way to Texas. We'd been driving south along Interstate 17 for about an hour now, after having seen Dog's playmate Dozer Meadows off at the Grand Canyon airport on our way out of the park. Meadows intended to use the money we'd given him to fly out to Pittsburgh in time for the Steelers game tomorrow afternoon. He still wasn't going to be able to play, he said, but he missed the team too much to just watch the game on TV from his home back in Los Angeles. He told us he was going to walk the sidelines down on the field and, depending on how the Raiders were doing, kick ass where and when it needed to be kicked.
"Later, Mrs. Loudermilk," he had said at the boarding gate, smothering me in a bear hug big enough to warm the state of Montana. I could have dozed off in there, it felt so good.
The big man was worried about me. He was afraid he had scarred me for life dispatching Phil the way he had before my horrified eyes, but I told him he was just being silly. After all, if he had not come looking for Dog and me when he did, having grown impatient waiting for our return to the trailer park with his money, it would have very likely been our bodies the authorities were endeavoring to raise from the dry Canyon floor this day, and not Phil's. Meadows had done the only thing he could do under the circumstances, I promised him, and there was no need to worry about me; I was just fine.
I think he believed the first part, but would always doubt the last, no matter what I said.
Dog, meanwhile, wanted to go with him, of course, but Joe said he was going to have to go folded up inside a Samsonite bag if he did, because his father and I were too tapped out to buy him a ticket. We ended up agreeing to take him along with us to Texas, and from there we'd
fly him to the destination of his choice once his sister Mo had wired us some fresh cash.
Alex Medavoy hadn't shown up to see it, but we had fled the Canyon's trailer park at eight sharp, well within our nine-thirty deadline. It had been a hard thing for me to do, run for high ground like a mouse catching sight of a cat, just because a government man snapped his fingers, but Joe, surprisingly, had taken the insult far worse than I. He had been ready to leave for three days now, so much so that I thought he might even appreciate Agent Medavoy's assistance in finally persuading me to go, but no. Joe had become incensed instead. Why I hadn't fully expected this reaction, I don't know; the best way to light a fire under Joe has always been to try and tell him what is and is not his business. Especially when the person doing the telling is a badge-flashing government stooge. Still, we tucked our tails beneath us and obeyed orders, on time and without complaint. In less than seven days, we had dodged more bullets than the Allied forces had at Normandy, and we knew we'd be pressing our luck to remain sitting targets at the Canyon for so much as one more day. Leaving the park now, under duress, would exact a certain cost in terms of wounded pride and unsatisfied curiosity, yes, but we could live with these annoyances, given time. The same could not be said for a five-year stretch in the Gulag, courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hard time and old convicts don't mix all that well.
Putting something behind you and putting it out of your mind, however, is not always the same thing. Try as I might to think about something else, I just couldn't shake the feeling that our fleeing the Canyon at the FBI's request was leaving the door open for something terrible to happen. That they had sent us packing to cover up something they did not want widely known was obvious; what was not were the possible consequences of letting them have their way. And that was the doubt that nagged at me: Who was going to pay for the damage control job we were helping the Bureau pull off at the Grand Canyon, and at what price?
A human life, perhaps?
It was a question worth worrying about, as far as I was concerned, and so worry I did, as our exile to Texas came closer and closer to reality with each passing mile marker. "I don't like this," I kept saying, over and over again, until Dog and Joe had finally been forced to voice their sarcastic objections. Eventually, I found the willpower to stop saying the words—but I never could make the thought itself go away.
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