Farrell jerked his head at The Wave, who arched his eyebrow.
“Bad, huh?” Farrell said to Page.
Page set the glass down. “Hadn’t seen him in ten years. Just too bad this is what it took to change him.”
“You ticked off at her, mon?” The Wave asked.
“Inez?” Page said. “I don’t like the way she did it, but I saw him.”
Farrell ordered another round of Dickels.
“Last one for me,” The Wave said. “I’m going to jump on the hill first thing in the morning.”
Farrell drank as he watched tourists in neon blues and reds take to the floor to dance the two-step. “I went to her room the night before I left Tahoe.”
Page rolled his eyes. “Can’t stay away from the bad thing, can you?”
Farrell ignored him. “She had some equipment running. It was rude footage, but I can tell you that little helmet camera recorded in quite artistic fashion the nature and pathos of your little family reunion.”
Page studied the row of bottles behind the bar while he drank the whiskey. “Figured as much the next morning. Told her she couldn’t use it. She laughed and showed me a paper I’d signed that released her to use any interviews with me or my family. I never read the fine print. Bitch.”
“You’re still here,” Farrell said.
Page’s eyes were bleary. His nose ran. “You got somewhere else for me to go? Maybe I finish. Maybe a hundred thousand people or more see me jump old Granite. Who the Christ knows what she’ll get me to do next!”
“In all the way,” Farrell said.
“To the damned end,” Page said, cracking his knuckles off the thick pinewood. “And from the way she screeched when she’d found you’d split, I see you are, too. Face it. You’re just as obsessed with her as the rest of us. Maybe more, you’re fucking her.”
“Not anymore I’m not,” Farrell said. He drained the rest of the whiskey from his glass.
“Maybe not with your cock, but you’re still doing her with your head,” Page said. He lurched out of the saddle. “So drink your whiskey, Collins. Get yourself good and numb, good and fucking numb before the next mental mind fuck.”
The Wave hurried after him. “I’ll make sure he gets home, mon.”
Farrell watched them go, then stared at himself in the gilt-edged mirror behind the bar. The scars on his cheeks and below his eyes had begun to fade. He wondered if the ones inside would ever clear. He gritted his teeth at the memory of how Stern had cut at him.
“You have the right to … an attorney,” Stern said after Lena had fled up the stairs. Farrell sat in his living room, surrounded by the men in blue windbreakers. Stern paced back and forth in front of him, talking in an unnerving speech pattern, like one of those annoying Midwestern radio announcers; the first part of Stern’s sentences rushed out and then he’d stop, his eyes would dart over Farrell, his Adam’s apple would bob over the knot of his tie, he’d tap his pencil twice on the yellow legal pad in front of him, and finally … finish.
“I waive it,” Farrell replied.
Stern laid the whole thing out: they had him cold on currency transaction violations. The FBI, the Treasury Department, and the Drug Enforcement Agency had been watching the trading houses along the border for almost a year, and when the volume increased and moved to Farrell’s bank, they followed. They had a search warrant for Farrell’s office, which they planned to execute at six in the morning.
“You did quite well, you know,” Stern said. “We still don’t know where the money went … after the first two wire transfers. Which, of course, as far as you’re concerned, is irrelevant. We’ve got you on at least twenty counts of failure to file the correct documents.”
Farrell leaned forward, intent on Stern’s tapping pencil, all too aware of the three other agents sitting on the chairs behind him. “What’s the penalty for failure to file?”
“You could do twenty years … Mr. Farrell,” Stern said.
Twenty years. The thought of no movement, trapped for two decades, raised a dread in Farrell worse than a whistle in the night. He saw himself standing atop a cliff. Dogs had him at bay.
“But …” Stern began.
“But?”
“You are really not who we were after,” Stern said. “If you could be of aid to us, we … we … could recommend leniency.”
Farrell sank back into the cushions on the couch, knowing that an escape route had been offered, a path down off the cliff. Part of him wanted to have it done with and be punished, to take the long fall, to embrace the impact. Then came the thought of Lena and what it would do to her.
“Perhaps now you would like … an attorney present?” Stern said.
“I’ll handle this myself,” Farrell said.
The tapping on the yellow legal pad stopped briefly. “As I said, leniency is …”
“Full immunity for what I know,” Farrell said.
“Impossible,” snapped Stern. The pencil cracked off the legal pad so hard the lead tip broke off and skittered onto the glass tabletop.
“Then I’m shutting up,” Farrell said.
“We’ve got you … clear-cut. My office won’t go for full immunity.”
“Did you see my wife climb the stairs?” Farrell asked. “I’ll live with that the rest of my life.”
“You should have known that before you set out to break the law, Mr. Farrell,” Stern said.
“I was aware of some of it,” Farrell said. “But I didn’t know what I was getting into.”
“And you got that awful case of gonorrhea off a toilet seat,” Stern scoffed. “Cut to it.”
Farrell swallowed hard, then said: “You don’t know a quarter of what they do and who they are.”
Stern shifted uncomfortably. “Without some indication of what you have … and, you must know, I don’t have that kind of power. It’s up to the U.S. Attorney.”
“Call him,” Farrell said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s almost midnight,” Stern said.
Farrell gambled. “You’re supposed to search my office at six. You’ll get some of what you’re after. But you’ll also alert them. You’ll never understand who the players are, how it all fits together.”
Stern stood and crossed to the blue china clock on the mantelpiece. He ran his finger over the dome and the intricate scrollwork above the quiet face that hadn’t been wound in nearly two years. He said, “Give me something to show … how lousy you were.”
Farrell’s fingers ripped into the palm of his hand. So that’s how it’s going to be, he thought: enforced humility.
He swallowed twice. In as sarcastic a voice as he could muster, he said, “While Christian Rodriguez tries to come off as a sophisticated horse breeder, he is actually a sadist who has killed several prostitutes. His boss, Fernando De La Leon, for a fact, is henpecked.”
The pencil slipped from Stern’s fingers, clattering on the pale brown tiles in front of the fireplace. Behind Farrell one of the other agents whispered, “Well tie me up and fuck me cross-eyed.”
Stern bent slowly to pick up the pencil. But Farrell could see he was stunned and fighting to retain his composure. “You’ve met with these men … Mr. Farrell?”
“Call your boss,” Farrell said.
Chapter 21
MARCH 2, 1989
Strange men in my house. They’ve looked through every corner, behind every book. It’s not like I can bop them off the head with something heavy and drive them away. They have the right to be here now. Strangers.
With them this new alien. He tries to talk to me now, but all I can see are the faces in the cribs. Can all this change in a moment? I am me, but no longer Lena Farrell. But when was I? And when was he the person I thought he was?
I did a brief rotation once in a head-trauma ward. The speech pathologist used to say to the relatives: You are going to have to learn to live with a new person; he may look the same on the outside, but inside the wiring in his brain has been altered. When f
ully recovered he may understand your speech, but be unable to reply. He may be able to express himself beautifully, yet not understand a word you say.
Then this woman would touch the relative on the arm and say, There’s still hope for a full recovery, always hope. If not, if you love him and the person he was, you’ll learn to love the person he’s become.
I’ve heard her say those words a hundred times in the past three days: There’s still hope for a full recovery. Recovery from what? Where is the trauma? I can’t see the wound!
Farrell hung his head. It was almost 10 A.M. the following day. The Wave had knocked on his door an hour earlier to tell him that Inez had called. The crew would meet that evening. She expected Farrell to have a plan. Farrell phoned a man that Portsteiner once mentioned named Dunphy, an old guide who knew the Tetons well. Dunphy’s wife told Farrell the guide would meet him for lunch.
Farrell petted Ruby’s back until his fingers found the sore. It was clearing. He gripped the bedsheets with his other hand, recalling how Lena’s face seemed almost festered when he’d gone up to their room. A heavy fog swirled along the coast, sending rivulets of moisture down the panes of the window. Lena sat upright in bed, hugging a pillow to her chest. Her eyes were swollen and red. She did not look at him.
“I was trying to get out, to get us out,” Farrell began. “But I couldn’t see how.”
“There was no us in this,” Lena said. “There was only you.”
Farrell chewed the inside of his lip. “I’ve agreed to tell them everything. I’ve been offered immunity, so little of this will ever become public.”
“How wonderful for you!” Lena screamed. “I’m so glad you’re safe from the effects.”
“It’s not like that,” Farrell said. “I’m going to destroy them.”
He reached for her hand, which was worrying the pillowcase. She slapped his hand away and her other hand struck him across the mouth. Farrell did not turn from that blow, nor the dozens that followed. Lena flailed until her knuckles cracked and bled, until she collapsed and curled into the fetal position. She moved her swelling hands across the sheets, staining them with arcs of red calligraphy. “I’m going home,” she whispered.
“You can’t,” Farrell murmured. The taste of copper seeped between his lower lip and gums. A welt burned under his right eye. “Stern says if we break pattern, we’ll never get them.”
For a moment Farrell thought she would strike again. He flinched. “That’s it, Jack, pull away!” she yelled. “Have you ever seen a baby suffer just from being held?”
“No.”
“No, nothing ever breaks through to you,” she said. She threw her arms in the air. “So what am I supposed to do in the meantime, Jack? Just go to work as if nothing has happened? Hello? What’s new? Oh, my husband’s a drug runner, but other than that not much.”
“I’m no drug runner,” Farrell said.
“Now there’s a pretty idea to keep in your head when you’re out buying me cars with your … money.”
“I wish it were that easy,” Farrell said. “I wish I could say I did it solely for greed. That was part of it, a small part. If it was everything, you’d probably understand.”
“I still don’t think I would,” Lena said. “But please, don’t tell me you were doing it for the good of mankind.”
Farrell thought of Gabriel and Cordova.
“No, I didn’t,” Farrell said.
“Then why?”
“Have you ever walked along the edge of a cliff just to know what it feels like?”
“I’ve never had the urge.”
“I’ve never not had the urge.”
Lena’s attention did not waver; it was if she were observing an animal in a zoo.
“I’d leave the house when I was a kid, do everything to leave the house, you know?” He pulled up his shirt to point to a faint line below his rib cage. “You see that?”
Lena nodded.
“Out in the woods, miles out, there was a quarry filled with water. We’d jump higher and higher off the cliffs. None of my friends had ever gone off the very top, this big boulder up there, they called the Cat. It was eighty feet up.”
“And you went.”
“I was petrified. But I did it anyway, running as fast as I could and then diving. A branch cut me on the way down. And when I hit the water, it turned red around me and two of the younger boys cried because they thought I’d gutted myself. We stopped the bleeding with a towel. My mom and dad never knew. It was my secret. I’d lift up my shirt to see the scab and smile. That sensation of having made it … it was like nothing I’d ever felt before.”
“You’re sick, Jack.”
“It got me out of that house,” Farrell insisted. “It was the only way I knew how. Every time I’d move, they’d be around me, watching …”
“I’ve heard it all a dozen times, Jack,” Lena said. “Fear of that bad Farrell gene, boxing you in. So when something real bad happens—your dad dying—you run to Africa. Now to Mexico. Spare me.”
“What would you know?” Farrell snarled. “Did dear mom and dad O’Rourke crowd you into the center, a center where nothing seems real, just soft? So the only thing that has hardness is away from that—at the edge?”
Lena’s mouth dropped open slightly, taken aback at the viciousness in his voice. “Jack, I—”
“You can’t live if you’re always trying to be soft,” Farrell said. He fought the swelling in his throat. “I learned that the hard way. There was no suicide, though it might as well have been. Just another Farrell cover-up. It was spring after my second year in Utah. I was going home for the first time. They knew I was on my way. I’d called from the road the day before. Two years since I’d seen them.
“Mom was sitting out on the front porch staring at the lake when I got to the house. She looked like everything she had was stolen. She said, ‘I didn’t want to tell you. But he’s been bad, real bad for a month.’ ”
Farrell looked at his wife. “For some reason, the idea of seeing me after all that time put him over. His dad had hung himself.” But he didn’t wait for me to get to the house. They wrestled and the gun went off and dug a shallow groove in his forehead. He lives in a home where they care for him. My mom visits twice a week.”
There was a long silence. Shocked, Lena said to herself, “That’s why she could never leave Maine.”
Farrell slid down the wall and rested his head in his hands.
“God, Jack … why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’ve never been to see him,” Farrell said. “He was so scary and beautiful when he got going. I didn’t want to see him all mushy. So when mom said he’d stabilized, I went to Africa, buried him in the spices and brilliant colors and animals.”
“You couldn’t tell me,” Lena said.
“I wanted him buried,” Farrell said. “A dead man is easier to bury.”
They were quiet. Farrell looked at his fingernails. Lena closed her eyes.
Farrell said, “When I first met Gabriel, I was that little kid on the Cat again. Things looked brighter and smelled better than they had since I’d been in Africa. I chased those feelings all the way in. What I was really after, I don’t know. About a month ago I realized it wasn’t the same anymore: it was growing dark in my little fantasy and very scary and I didn’t know how I’d gotten there.”
The first pelting drops of a storm struck the window. Neither of them said anything. They just listened to the rain.
“I want to sleep, Jack,” Lena said. “I want you to leave.”
Farrell shut the door behind him. He shuffled around the house. He bumped into a table and overturned a lamp. He tried to sleep on the couch, but couldn’t. He wandered again, finding himself in the basement. He blew away the dust that had gathered on Jenny’s white dresser. When it was clean, he slumped down next to it. He thought of his father, only thirteen then, and how he’d found his father hanging. Farrell squeezed his arms in tight about his ribs to control the pain, to shove
it inside a box, to wrap it securely.
In the motel room, Farrell allowed himself to feel more. Gone was his ability to tape painful memories shut. The flaps in his mind gaped open. He thought about his father and mother and how much he loved them. He thought about how much he’d let Lena down. He let these recollections sift and collide until he saw the common thread: in each case, he’d abandoned the ones he cared about. He surprised himself and cried.
Peter Dunphy knew the Tetons. He was a wiry gnome of a man, short, silver-haired, peppered beard, and close to sixty, with an infectious energy that displayed itself every time his finger stabbed at the topographical map he’d laid out on the table at LeJay’s 24-Hour Sportsmen’s Café.
“Talked to Frank Portsteiner after you called,” Dunphy said. “Says you’re a bit headstrong, but sound on a mountain. Told me to tell you he’ll be up here tonight if you’re around.”
“He coming to ski?” Farrell asked.
“By April that Frankie boy’s sick of it,” Dunphy said. “He’s been coming up middle of the cruel month the past few years to fish the early hatch on the Yellowstone and the lakes that lose ice early.”
Over the course of an hour, Dunphy laid out the three premier extreme skiing routes in the Tetons: Buck Mountain, Mount Moran, and the Grand Teton.
“Grand’s the sumbitch,” Dunphy said. “When a local guy named Briggs first tried it back in 1971, no one he knew had even climbed the route he came down. He left the top at fourteen thousand feet on the East snowfield, down to a throat called the Stettner Couloir toward the Black Dike ridge and on to Tepee’s Glacier. Steeper than hell. Wonder he lived through it.”
“What time of year he do it?”
“Started climbing June fifteenth,” Dunphy said. “Now that was a big snow year, he had to wait a long time. Not as much this year, but still, you got at least three weeks ’til it’s safe. I’d say first of May minimum. But you should hike in and dig some pits before you make any decision.”
“I think the director, French lady, is going to want to go before then,” Farrell said. “Is it possible?”
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