The Last Descent

by Jeff Soloway

  I followed Doby, Glenda, and Grant to the quietest corner of the reception area, the one farthest from the bar.

  —

  The Canyon rim was just a standing broad jump away. There were no tourists nearby. The brass corner post supporting the rope wobbled in the breeze.

  “Will the tapes be ready tomorrow?” Doby asked.

  Glenda looked back at Gus, who was near the podium. He had put on a pair of Walmart-grade cheater glasses and was anxiously flipping through a thin stack of papers. He nodded to a regular beat as his lips enunciated silently. Even mobsters get stage fright.

  “What tapes?” I asked.

  Glenda shot a glare but didn’t dare order me away—she couldn’t make a scene in front of all the other writers. Now I was part of their group.

  “Tapes!” said Doby. “Listen to me. Stuck in the eighties. I meant video. Security video. Showing Jewel Rider the morning she died. Your security chief said the hotel’s got cameras in the lobby, the parking lot, the approach road. We want to see who she left the hotel with. Your guy agreed to give me access—tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow should be fine,” Glenda said. “Unless Grant has an objection?”

  “Why—if I may be a little muley for a moment—would Mr. Flanders have an objection?” Doby asked.

  “Everything sensitive goes through Grant,” Glenda said.

  “The last thing I want,” Grant said, “is to hold up the investigation. I have no problem with releasing our video.” Surely it was too late to have a problem. “So—how do you know she left with someone?” He didn’t even try for offhandedness.

  Victoria came up behind him. Her back was to the setting sun, her face in shadow. Grant wasn’t panicked, as he had been in McSwiggan’s, or even as he had started to be in the van. But his continuing affectlessness seemed designed to hide a growing apprehension.

  “We had a breakthrough,” said Doby.

  “Yes?” asked Glenda.

  “I’ve been canvassing all week. Chatting up the long-haulers at the Backcountry Information Center, handing out my flyers at the trailheads. Those flyers cost me three hours of screaming agony at the computer—well, two hours and forty-five minutes for me, fifteen minutes for the intern. But it was worth it. I got a call from a young woman—Japanese, quiet on the phone, but not a shy one. That very day she was puttering around the top of the Hermit Trail with her boyfriend. They saw a woman like the one in the pictures—I mean Jewel—and a man walking with her. He was tall, thin, with dark eyes. Good-looking, the woman said. Could’ve been—well, it could’ve been Mr. Flanders.”

  Grant finally allowed himself an expression. He shook his head gently, even kindly, already forgiving the misapprehension.

  “It could have been anyone,” said Glenda.

  “No doubt!” said Doby. “Lots of tall, thin lookers in this park, I’d say. Anyway, I’m heading over to the lodge tomorrow to show those folks some photos.”

  “What photos?” Grant asked.

  “Photos of suspects. Activists we know she talked to. Other men she knew in the area. Friends. But I’d love to see those security videos too—maybe we can identify somebody else. Then we go to the witnesses with extra info. What do you think of my plan?” She was pretending to ask Glenda.

  Grant had told Doby, and me, that he had never left his hotel room that morning. If he appeared on the video with Jewel, or if his photo was ID’d by Doby’s witnesses, then we would know that he had lied. She might be able to arrest him immediately.

  Why was she telling Grant her plans? And Glenda Greenbaum as well? Perhaps she hoped that Grant was so afraid of the Greenbaums that he would panic and run, or beg for protection.

  He didn’t seem panicked. He saw me studying his face and winked at me.

  “Glenda!” Behind the podium, Gus had pushed his glasses up onto the white lawn of his hair and was looking desperately in all directions. Glenda went to his aid.

  “We’ll be expecting you tomorrow,” Grant said to Doby, and followed Glenda.

  Doby whispered in my ear: “Keep an eye on Grant. Call if he tries to ditch.” She crossed the reception ground, ducked under the rope, and vanished into the crowd.

  —

  Glenda introduced her husband as the head of the Grand Chalet’s parent company, Ritzpierre Estates International. Gus ascended the step behind the podium, turned his face to the left, and unfurled a long, thin, terrifyingly taut smile. He held the position for a moment, turned his head twenty degrees, loosed the smile again, held it, and turned another twenty degrees, over and over again, until everyone in the area had a chance to photograph the same smile straight on.

  I found a place by Magda’s side. Gus exhaled into the mike, making the speakers crackle.

  “Spirituality!” he began.

  “Get me a drink,” Magda whispered. “Or kill me.”

  I made my way toward the bar. I passed Marlene at the back fringes of the crowd, her curly red hair fluttering in the breeze like a hilltop campfire. She was looking off to the side, toward the red rope, and Grayson. We both watched him take a swig from a plastic water bottle. I hoped the bottle held water.

  “I can’t help you,” Marlene murmured to me. “Tell Victoria I’m sorry.” Before I could respond, she moved forward into the crowd.

  “This magnificent place,” Gus continued, “is sacred to the Native American people. Their gods were born here. Their ancestors were resurrected in the confluence of rivers below. Their spirits call to all of us as we marvel at the glorious view. To gaze into the Grand Canyon is to commune with the American sublime. And when at last our daily sojourn at this wondrous chasm is over, when the sun has settled below the horizon and we turn to the prospect of rest, what do we want most of all?”

  Gus looked up from his text. A breeze trilled the stiff ends of his hair.

  “What?” Grant shouted.

  “Not to sleep in a dump, that’s what!” Gus answered.

  He raised his hand. Realizing he expected applause, Grant clapped frantically.

  “Some say, ‘Big Deal!’ ” Gus swooped his hands, gathering up two enormous piles of Deal. “So what if the room-service menu is frozen pizza and your bathtub has a moldy crust and your bedsheets have those little drool craters? This is the Grand Canyon. You’re supposed to be up and out at the crack of dawn. You’re supposed to work yourself on the trails so hard you could sleep on a cactus. Who gives two you-know-whats about your room?”

  Another pause, this time for sycophantic laughter, dutifully provided. Gus looked up and grinned. This wasn’t so hard. The congressman was laughing the hardest and at the same time nodding in agreement and perhaps admiration. These days, politicians made no distinction between getting laughs and getting laughed at. Both results were effective. Everyone wanted to be Donald Trump.

  “I care, that’s who!” Gus declared. “And so do all of us at Ritzpierre Estates and the Grand Chalet Grand Canyon. Take a look behind me. Keep looking. You see something like that, you want to think about God and the purpose of God’s beauty. How are you going to do that when you’re distracted by some dog-ass smell from the toilet?” He was getting cocky, going off-script. “Or when the kids are whiny and have to pee? You need a decent room! And a decent kids’ program! And once you’ve connected spiritually with the Canyon and hopefully with the certain special someone you’ve brought along, and let’s face it, that’s the only reason most of us ever get on an airplane, you want to keep those fires burning. You want a Jacuzzi, you want massages, you want sheets that don’t scratch your parts, you want fine dining, not some ketchup-and-A.1. slophouse. Above all—” He stopped himself short and took a deep breath. He didn’t want to slide off the track just as he was rounding the last turn.

  “Above all”—Gus’s head was once again bowed to his script—“you want to keep your body receptive to spiritual insights. Now, I’m not saying you can’t get the true Grand Canyon experience without world-class comforts. I’m just saying some people can’t.
” He looked up and wiggled a finger over his head. “Guilty! People like me, like a lot of people, like almost everybody, they stay in dumps because they have to. Well, now they don’t have to. And I say, never accept the inferior experience!”

  The inferior experience. Sounded like my divorced mother describing one of her dates, but the line was clearly a clue. Glenda and Grant applauded, and many followed their lead.

  The servers near the bar stood idle to keep from disrupting the speech. One was trying to fill a grid of champagne glasses set up on a folding table. He poured so quickly that the fizz slopped over the sides of each one. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Can I have a glass?” I whispered.

  “What? Yeah.” He pushed a frothing glass to me, drenching both our fingers.

  Gus was getting excited again. “They told us it couldn’t be done! Families wanted tents and cheap park lodges. Couples wanted Hawaii. Who ever heard of Tusayan? What the heck is Tusayan? I’ll tell you what it is. A town with a heart the size of a buffalo! This place, this resort, this Grand Chalet Grand Canyon, it’s an expression of our town. Every single staff member believes in it. Am I right?”

  The waiters around me whooped and clapped. Those holding trays stomped their feet. They even knew to smile when the writers turned to snap pictures. I reached for another glass and noticed that the staffer pouring the champagne wasn’t applauding. He was staring up at the sky.

  “You’re not a waiter,” I whispered.

  “What?” He snapped his head down to look at me.

  “Tell me who you are or I’ll call for security.”

  “Who are you?” he hissed.

  “A writer. I knew Jewel Rider.”

  He leaned toward me over the table. “They killed her.”

  “Who killed her?”

  “Take pictures. They might not hurt me if you take pictures.”

  He shut his eyes and grasped his hair with his hands, pulling his forehead tight and his eyebrows high. He seemed in the grip of a long-anticipated fit. He passed his hands down his face, his neck, and his chest. I backed away from the table. He tore off his apron and ran around the table to the space just in front of me. What he screamed sounded like words, but I couldn’t make them out. He screamed again, and this time I caught them: “Blood on your hands!” He kept screaming.

  Everyone turned to stare. Many of the writers still had their cameras out; now they aimed them at the screaming waiter. I took out my phone too. I was closest; my pictures would be best.

  “Blood on your hands!”

  I heard a grunt off to the side and saw Grayson charge from his post, along with another, even larger guard, one with a face like a basketball—round, brown, and pitted—and something heavy in his hand, a club or a flashlight. I flicked on my phone’s LED flash. The round-faced guard was closer. As he lifted his weapon, I aimed the light in his eyes as the blow descended. The screaming waiter dodged and the guard missed. But Grayson was right behind him.

  Then Grant was there. He must have sprinted from the front. He bear-hugged the screamer, muffling his voice and at the same time protecting his body. “I’ve got him!” Grant shouted. I backed off.

  Grant went to his knees, dragging the screamer with him. Grayson whirled, bewildered, looking for someone to club. The round-faced guard, more adaptable or less drunk, crouched to grab the screamer’s arms from behind him and clamp them to the small of his back. “Handcuffs!” he barked at Grayson.

  “What?” Grayson asked.

  Many of the writers were now crowding close. The screamer’s grimace was perfect for close-ups. Magda was down on one knee to get a better angle.

  “Sorry for the psychopath!” Gus’s voice boomed overhead like a jet flyover. “All under control now.” His reassurance ended with a little giggle of fury. I tried to look for the politicians and celebrities, but they were hidden behind the wall of photographers.

  The detained waiter’s body convulsed, as if he were about to puke. He screamed again, something new: “Look to the sky!”

  Everyone looked up: writers, celebrities, servers, security, onlookers. A single star pierced the sky’s deepening blue. The sunset wildfire that had been sweeping the scattered clouds was now guttering, almost out. Nothing else was overhead. I looked back down at the screamer. Since his arms were pinioned, all he could do was stretch out his nose like a hunting dog. Out toward the canyon.

  A single onlooker pointed; several more pointed the same way; cameras turned; then everyone followed the same line of amazement.

  On a lone rock jutting out from the rim a man stood holding a banner. As it stretched in a gust, you could read its message:

  Grand Chalet: Blood in the Canyon

  The huge letters were slathered in dripping red paint, like a warning written in blood in a horror movie. At each corner of the sign was a crude knife dripping more blood, in case you missed the point of the text. The style seemed at first bloodcurdling, then silly, then cleverly ironic, like good horror movies themselves. At the widest part of the banner, closest to the staff, was an enormous, almost life-size image of a uniformed brute raising a baton over a cowering youth. The image looked familiar, and after a moment I remembered why: At the Herald Square press event, Jewel had showed it to us on her cellphone as an example of the Grand Chalet’s savagery. Someone must have blown it up and transferred it to fabric.

  The rock was a few hundred feet away, back across the Grandview Point overlook. The man holding the banner wore a bulky gray sweater that fluttered along with the banner. It was Freddie Bridgewater. He raised one arm high, the one in the cast. I assumed he was trying to make a fist with his restricted fingers.

  Gus’s voice exploded over us again: “Folks, time to head back to the Grand Chalet! We’ll let the pros deal with these goofballs.”

  At the word pros, Grayson, leaving the detainee to his partner, sprang up and dashed across the reception space. Invitees scrambled to make room. He ran with a lopsided, splay-toed gait that made me fear a drunken tumble, but he hurdled the rope like an expert, scattering several tourists, and galloped on.

  “Hey, I think I recognize that nut from the Best Western!” Gus boomed.

  The joke was probably intended simply to drown out any further slogans from the screamer. It wasn’t needed; the round-faced guard had the guy’s face mashed in the dirt.

  Grant took over the podium: “Vans are leaving now! Next stop, the Grand Chalet Grand Canyon!”

  Marlene was beside me. “Where is he going?” she whispered.

  “I’ll go help.”

  “Make him be careful!”

  I ducked under the rope and followed in Grayson’s tracks. He had shortcut across the base of the Grandview Point peninsula into the rocky terrain where Victoria and I had gazed together into the Canyon. Freddie’s boulder was sticking out from that swath of the rim. Now Freddie was stamping his staff against the rock surface, like Moses calling up water. Grayson, instead of picking his way down the winding paths to Freddie’s outcrop, was attacking the landscape directly, leaping clumsily from rock to rock. His footing was perfect so far, perhaps because he was too drunk to be nervous, but if he tried to tackle someone near the edge, two people would die. Maybe he realized this too; as he neared Freddie’s outcrop he began to slow down.

  Another gust rose from the Canyon, forcing Freddie to use his casted hand to help manage the banner. I hoped he’d have the sense to release it rather than let himself go paragliding off the rock.

  My view was temporarily obscured by the pines that lined the concrete walk. I hopped over the stone wall, burst through a gap in the trees, and began to descend the trail to Freddie’s outcrop. I tried to move quickly, but unlike Grayson, I kept looking down to avoid rocks and confirm my route. My steps felt absurdly dainty.

  The wind had eased. I could see now that there was a narrow chasm between Freddie’s outcrop and the nearby boulders attached to the main body of the rim. I wasn’t sure how Grayson would get to the outcrop, or
how Freddie got there in the first place, or how Freddie was planning to get back. But I could imagine myself out there beside him, buffeted by winds on all sides, just a few feet away from, as Over the Edge would have put it, Death by Falling.

  Now Freddie was wrapping his elbow around the staff to hold it upright while he reached into his pocket with his good hand. Grayson stopped short just on his way to the chasm. Freddie pulled something out and lifted his hand. Grayson flopped to his belly.

  Freddie stretched his arm straight out and smiled broadly. Grayson pushed himself up again. I realized that Freddie was taking a selfie. He stashed the phone back in his pocket and, mostly with his good hand, started to roll up the banner. Grayson was getting closer.

  Freddie was now done rolling up the banner. With his good hand, he gripped the staff in the middle and then heaved it like a javelin up over the chasm, over Grayson, back toward the overlook. The staff spun in its flight, but the banner didn’t unroll. It flew heroically far and clattered onto a boulder. People nearby yelped and scattered, in case it was a bomb. Those farther away gasped. The staff rolled a few feet and got caught in a notch. It didn’t explode.

  When I looked back for Freddie on the outcrop, he was gone.

  Grayson too had first turned to follow the banner’s flight and was now staring back at the empty outcrop.

  A few onlookers laughed at Grayson’s bafflement. A few more cheered. They must have been impressed with Freddie’s courage and panache; the banner was macabre, but the selfie had won them over.

  “He jumped down!” somebody yelled. Not everyone was rooting for the rabble-rousers.

  And then I realized why the outcrop had looked familiar. It was the rock from which the Broncos fan had done his disappearing act. Freddie Bridgewater must have disappeared in the same way—perhaps he had seen the same show. As all stage magicians know, you play your trick only after you perform a misdirection—which is why he had thrown the banner.

  How had I forgotten? Everything looked so different in the Canyon’s constantly changing light.