by Jeff Soloway
I tried it the next day.
—
Meat had made it to Santa Cruz. He was thrilled to talk to me, especially when I informed him that it would be an official on-the-record interview with a writer for Outside. The Grand Canyon Defense League was alive, he declared, and already liaising with Santa Cruz action groups to jump-start a new national green revolutionary movement. Locals were trying to book Meat for rallies and fund-raisers. Everyone had seen the “Blood in the Canyon” clips on YouTube. He was biding his time at the moment but planning to leap into action soon. “Freddie always did outreach,” he said. “I did logistics. But Kevin tells me I got to take chances.”
“How’s Kevin? I’d like to talk to him too.”
“He’s great. He’s out playing catch with Ruby. He likes it here. No dumbasses, he says.”
Ruby, he let slip with minimal prompting, was his new girlfriend. California was treating the Bridgewaters well.
“What’s your magazine again?” he asked. “Outside? I’ve heard of that one. How many people read it?”
It was nice for once to be able to say, without exaggeration or defensiveness, “Lots. Hundreds of thousands.”
“Good,” Meat said. “We’ll need them.” He fell silent. I thought I could hear Kevin’s ballgame commentary in the background. Maybe Meat was standing by an open window to catch the temperate California air, so different from Tusayan’s extremes of heat and chill. I could feel myself smiling. They were safe. One thing had gone right.
“It hasn’t exactly been a breeze,” Meat said at last. “We’ll always miss Freddie. Back in Arizona, everyone thought he was a hero or a nut. Nobody knew him, nobody but me and Kev. Now he’s a martyr. You see that stuff on the Internet? It’s real, but it’s wrong at the same time. We didn’t save the Grand Canyon. The Grand Chalet wasn’t causing the drought, just making it worse. Freddie knew that. It was good to fight the place. It deserved to burn. But if Freddie had known what was coming, he would have backed off. He wouldn’t have died to take down any hotel. He was a show-off, not a maniac.”
“I’m sorry, Meat.”
“Me and Kev, we talk about him every morning at breakfast. The rule is every other memory has to be funny. I feel guilty. Everybody just wants me to talk about my dead brother. I figure it’s okay to use his name for the movement. He would have wanted it that way. But it’s weird to talk like he was some hero. I never thought so when he was alive.”
“It’s not a lie, Meat,” I said. “Let people have their inspiration. They deserve it. Do me a favor. Tell people about Jewel. She would have wanted to inspire them too.”
“Okay, but you knew her better.”
He meant that remembering Jewel was my job.
“One more question,” I said. “How’d you get away from Tusayan? They found your car. The windows were smashed in. Your house was all torn apart. The Grand Chalet thugs were looking for you.”
“One of Freddie’s old buddies told me. I made him promise to keep quiet, so they wouldn’t follow us here. He says it’s safe now. But it could have been bad. Your friend was right about the ho-hos.”
“My friend?”
“That PR woman from the Grand Chalet, that jerkwad’s wife. What was her name? Victoria. We had just pulled out of the Grand Canyon Plaza. I stopped in to get my last paycheck. We were going to need it. Of course they gave us the runaround. Anyway, my phone rings and I make Kevin answer because I’m driving. She tells him the Grand Chalet guys are after us. I can hear her voice. I pull into some parking lot and grab the phone from him. She tells me they’re going to kill us like they killed Freddie. They know our car and our license number. But she says she can help. Jesus, I was scared.”
“You believed her?”
“Not at first. She told me her name, and I remembered I’d met her before at some protest. She seemed okay, better than that Grant. But I knew she was Grand Chalet. Then she said she was your friend. She said you were both on our side. You’d even showed her Freddie and Jewel’s map. I was still pretty iffy, but Kevin was tapping my shoulder to say he saw you two together the night before, on the rim. He said we should trust her. Kevin always says that.”
Meat paused. I imagined him looking outside at the ballplayers.
“But he’s got good instincts,” Meat went on. “So I cruise through the lot to the back roads and park where she told me, behind the playground. She pulls up in this dusty white Grand Chalet van with tinted windows. She gets out and tosses me the keys. She says keep driving and don’t come back. Nobody’ll miss the van. I’m half thinking this is some trick. But Kevin’s already throwing our stuff inside. So I get in. And that was that. We drove to Phoenix. Took a Greyhound to L.A. Had to connect through Vegas, that hellhole. Then up here. I’m pretty sure I saw one of the Grand Chalet bruisers by the side of the road near the Tusayan airport. But they didn’t do anything. They didn’t know it was me.”
“Where’d you leave the van?”
“In Phoenix, near the Greyhound station.”
That was near the airport.
“She was right, Meat. They were looking for you. She saved you.”
“There are decent people working for the Grand Chalet. Working everywhere. The hard part is getting them on our side.”
I tried to imagine Victoria calling Meat, arranging the switch, lifting the keys from Grant’s office or even from his dresser, if she had a card key for his room. What had been her secret purpose behind all that?
“What did she look like when you met her?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Nervous? But I was terrified, so who knows? At least they got the guys that killed Freddie. I’ve been reading about it online. That’s good enough for me. I’m done with Arizona.”
That afternoon, Victoria had not only called Doby to try to save me but had also rushed to save Meat and Kevin. Then she had waited for me to return. Had she been afraid for herself at all? She must have been. But she had vowed to change her life. At that point I hadn’t yet discovered Grant’s lie or her lie. What would she have done if I had never discovered those lies? I would have to wait ten years to ask her.
“Here’s something else I remember,” Meat said. “I was pretty antsy about that van. What if this was all a trap? Maybe the toughs were looking for a Grand Chalet vehicle, I didn’t know. But it wasn’t just Kevin that made me believe her. It was something she said. That you were risking your life to find Freddie’s meter and she wanted to take a risk too. The way she said it, I had to believe her. And it all turned out okay. Maybe you inspired her.”
Maybe I did.
BOOKS BY JEFF SOLOWAY
The Travel Writer
The Last Descent
PHOTO: © JAMIE ROSEN
Formerly an editor and writer for travel guides, JEFF SOLOWAY is now a book editor in New York City. In 2014 he won the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
randomhousebooks.com/authors/jeff-soloway
Every great mystery needs an Alibi
eOriginal mystery and suspense from Random House
randomhousebooks.com
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
* * *
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.