by Paul Moomaw
I walk back to the cabin and begin to wrap things up. I am in no hurry. I doubt if anyone has heard the gunfire, and if someone did he would assume this time of year that it was a hunter sighting in. I close the cabin door and make sure it is latched. I look around one last time and wonder how long it will take the people in St. Louis to figure out that something has gone wrong, and what they will do about it. Then I push the thought out of my mind and walk to the rental car. I start the car and pull onto the Forest Service road. There is a big smear of blood on the hood, but I remember seeing a self-service car wash across the street from the Chinese restaurant in Thompson Falls. I stop there and use five quarters to give the car a quick cleanup and then go to the motel. Katherine meets me at the cabin door, a copy of People Magazine in her hand.
“Some kind soul left it in the bathroom,” she says. “It isn’t much, but it beats watching Oprah.”
She observes silently as I pull the Ruger out of my belt and put it in my suitcase and then pull a bottle out. It is an old metal Gaz with a ceramic lining and a cap with a tight spring latch. It is meant for back packing but it has been my brandy travel bottle for years. I take it to the little table, pull the cellophane off of two of the plastic glasses supplied by the motel, and pour a couple of inches of brandy into each glass. I hand one to her and settle into the chair. It squeaks and sags under my weight. Katherine sits on the edge of the bed.
“You were gone longer than I thought.”
“There was a complication,” I say.
“Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out..”
I give her a blow by blow account. When I describe transporting the goon’s body back to the cabin on the hood of her car, she shakes her head and says, “Just like a deer, huh?” She is obviously not a hunter. No one would load a deer onto the hood of a car. The engine heat would spoil the flesh. But I do not correct her. Instead I assure her that I washed the blood off the car. She listens to the whole story with no other interruptions, just nodding now and then. When I am done she says, “How do you feel?”
“Like I won and they lost.”
She shakes her head. “No. Not that. That’s what you think. How do you feel?”
It is my turn to shake my head. I am at a loss. I do not have any feelings that I can identify. I feel all right, but that is not really a feeling in the way she seems to mean it.
“I’m glad they didn’t kill me,” I finally say.
Katherine nods energetically. “So am I.”
We go back to the Chinese restaurant that evening. On the way Katherine insists on stopping at a liquor store down the road. She tells me to wait in the car and goes inside. When she returns she has a bottle of champagne.
“It’s just California,” she says, “but it’s all they had except for Cold Duck. It was already chilled, and it will stay cool in the car now that the sun is down.”
After dinner we return to the motel and Katherine hands me the wine.
“You do it,” she says. “I always make a mess.”
I tear off the foil, undo the wire, and ease the cork out. It makes a small pop, but there is no overflow.
“You’re good with your hands.” Katherine says.
I rinse the plastic glasses out and fill them with champagne. She takes hers and says, “They were bad guys, weren’t they.”
“They were.”
She lifts her glass in a salute. “Here’s to getting rid of bad guys,” she says. She starts to smile, then stops as a shadow passes behind her eyes, and I know she is thinking about her brother. Then she shakes her head slightly and smiles again. “All of them,” she says. We touch glasses and drink.
We do very little talking the rest of the evening and before long I begin to feel the fatigue that I had managed to ignore up to now. Katherine sees it, too, and says, “I think you want to go to bed.”
I don’t argue. We undress and slide under the covers. The room is chilly again, and the blanket feels good. Katherine reaches out and brushes my cheek with her knuckles.
“How bad were they?”.
“Pretty bad.”
“But they couldn’t kill you.”
“I’m hard to kill.”
She sighs and presses herself against me. “That’s good,” she says, and rolls away. Very soon I am asleep.
I wake up sexually aroused. My groin is hot and my penis is as hard as a rock, and Katherine’s tongue is toying with it. Her pale face is caught in the glow of a streetlight out on the road, and she glances over at me, her eyes gleaming. She takes my penis deeper into her mouth and sucks on it, and I am swept up with passion. She keeps sucking until I am at the edge of orgasm, and then seems to sense that and pulls her mouth away.
“You get even bigger when you’re about ready to come,” she whispers. She raises herself and straddles me. She looks down at me with a huge smile and bends down to kiss me. Then as our tongues squirm together she lowers herself onto me. Her vagina is wet and slick and sucks me in like a vacuum. “So big,” she says. “So big.” She sits higher and looks down at me as she begins to ride my penis, bucking up and down, and then bends forward for another kiss. I reach around her ass and stroke her anus with my fingertips and she jerks and groans and then thrusts harder against me until she comes with a quiet scream. I grab her hips and keep her moving for another few moments and then I let go of everything and she collapses on top of me.
We lie together as our bodies calm down, stroking and touching without talking, and then I am asleep again. In the morning we rise early and start back to Seattle. Nothing is said about the night before, or the day that led up to it, and Katherine is distant, not withdrawn from me specifically, but in some special place of her own, and I am content to let her be there.
Chapter 47
In the face of uncertainty there is something to be said for business as usual, and that is why I am passing through the Lincoln Tunnel, high in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver, on a ninety-mile drive to Dillon. I may never kill Gordon Washburn and if I do it will be for completion, not pay, given what Angwin has told me; but at least I am doing what I do. That allows me to slip into a routine and settle my mind and body. I flew from Seattle to Denver and rented a car. Now I feel a sense of calm and detachment as I follow the winding highway over Loveland Pass, or just under it. The old road still goes over the pass, and on heavy ski weekends the tunnel is made one way, and drivers going in the other direction take the old route. Coming back I may do the same, just because I have never been there.
I spent last night with Katherine. We made love, not with the fierceness and abandon of the night in Thompson Falls, but I was able to stay hard again. I will not need the Viagra after all and that is good because I would not have used it. Call it male pride. Katherine did not ask to go with me on this trip and so I did not have to say no, which I would have. When I am doing what I am doing now, scouting, planning, reconnoitering, I need to be alone. I do not deal well with distractions.
The east side of the mountains, what they call the Front Range, is steep and the road climbs hard through narrow canyons. On the other side the land falls away more gently and quickly opens up into high valleys. Dillon Lake is in one of those, very close to the continental divide. The town is a mix of cheap tacky and expensive tacky, but at least it is pure American and makes no effort to imitate an Alpine village. I have made reservations at a Best Western and used the name David Hyde. It was one of those small impulses that I allow myself, a way to thumb my nose at the Mob even though they will never know.
I see Washburn’s house before I get into town. Even in a crowd of condominiums and vacation homes his stands out. It perches on the edge of a bluff overlooking the lake. It is too big and too white to hide, and makes no effort to. From here the third story flag looks even bigger than it did in photos. After I check in and drop my suitcase in my motel room I go back to my car and find my way to Washburn’s drive. It takes off from a lake road and sports a PRIVATE sign, but there is no gate. It climbs stee
ply, with sharp turns, and I wonder how often it needs to be plowed in the winter. After about half a mile it makes one last turn and ends abruptly, and without warning, in front of the house. A circle roundabout goes right past the front door before rejoining the drive. A three-car garage on the left side of the house is open and empty and there appears to be no activity around the place, so I stop and get out. I walk to the right side of the house and circle around. The place is huge and I do not even try to guess how many rooms it has. I still see no sign of life so I go closer and peek in a window. I see a large living room with scattered furniture and a giant television. There is a back door and I check it just on principal. It is locked with a high-security deadbolt that I would not want to have to pick. I circle the rest of the way around the house and walk up to the front door. It sports a similar lock. The windows, however, are large and easy to reach, and I see no sign of security tape that would indicate an alarm. I go back to my car and drive away. I have seen no indications, other than the lock, that Washburn puts a lot of emphasis on security. There seem to be no alarm system and no cameras, and if he has a guard dog it is one of the quiet kind.
I go back to the motel and sit for a while, wondering how I might go about doing the job if I decide to. I cannot expect to find him by meandering around town. Dillon is not that small. But my body does not care. It wants some movement after too many hours sitting. I decide to get some exercise by exploring the lake front. I leave the motel and walk the half mile or so down to the water and then turn left. There is a bike path along the shore and I follow that. I pass a marina, one of two on the lake. It is large and filled with a mix of sail and motor. The day is bright and sunny but the place seems pretty much battened down for winter, which is not too far away at this altitude, although a couple of sailboats play in the waves a thousand feet out. I walk for three quarters of an hour and am never out of reach of houses and businesses, then turn and head back for the downtown area. Not far from where I would head back to the motel I see a restaurant-bar and decide to reward myself with a beer. I step inside, let my eyes adjust to the dimmer light, and immediately renew my belief in serendipity. Sitting at a corner table framed by two large windows is Gordon Washburn. He has a glass of wine in his hand and is looking out the window.
Grab the moment, I decide, and walk over to his table.
“Mr. Washburn?” I say, and he looks up. His gaze is neither welcoming nor forbidding.
“Could I talk to you for a minute?” I say.
“As long as I don’t necessarily have to talk back,” he says. He smiles and his eyes light up a little. I find myself warming to him and have to remind myself that he is a con man. He made his fortune by getting people to like him. He is like Maxfield that way, but the resemblance ends there. Maxfield was good looking and physically imposing. Washburn is not. He is pudgy and has a potato nose that only W.C. Fields’ mother could love. As I sit down across from him I guess that he is a good three inches shorter than I am. He has a large bald spot at the crown of his head, which the photos I saw of him did not reveal, and a careful comb-over in front that looks as vain and futile as they always do.
I have let my unconscious work overtime and it rewards me with a reasonable yarn to tell him.
“I’m a writer.”
Washburn’s eyes narrow and I am suddenly not sure my unconscious has steered me right.
“News guy?” he says.
I shake my head. “Not news. I’m a freelancer.”
“Where have you been published?”
“Not much anywhere,” I say, which is the truth, as I have never written anything for publication in my life. “I guess I’m not a very successful freelancer. But I have hope.”
“I used to have a lot of that,” Washburn says. He continues to smile, but there is a shadow behind his eyes.
“I’m putting together a book, sort of a fallen idol kind of thing. I want to tell the stories of people who have flown high and fallen hard. I’m going to call it,” I pause for a moment because my mouth has gotten ahead of my brain, but then my unconscious comes to my rescue again. “I’m going to call it The Icarus Syndrome.”
“So you want me in it. Are your other subjects crooks, too?”
I widen my eyes and try to look confused. “Are you a crook, sir?”
“That’s what everybody says.”
“If I get this book sold, people will get to hear what you say.”
“And if you don’t sell it?”
“At least I’ll know.”
Washburn throws back his head and laughs. “And that will be my immortality.” He laughs again, then reaches across the table and taps me lightly on the bicep. “I like that.”
“I guess it’s pretty small potatoes to someone like you.”
Washburn leans over and gives me a conspiratorial look. “Don’t tell anybody, but I’m pretty fucking small potatoes myself these days.” He presses back in his chair and shakes his head. He smiles again, but it is bittersweet.
“I was by your house. It’s a pretty big house for a small potato.”
“It’s a huge house,” Washburn says. “I wanted it to be a statement and it goddam well is.” He sighs. “Maybe not the one I meant, though.”
“You must have a big family to need such a big place.”
Washburn shakes his head. “I had a wife and two kids. When everything fell apart she pulled out. She was a good Mormon, and my stuff tore her up. Good Mormon wives stick with their men, but good Mormon people shun crooks. She had to land on one side of the fence or the other. She decided I was a crook and she left.”
This is an aspect of him that I did not know about, and it piques my curiosity. “Boys or girls?”
“My kids? One of each. My daughter was twelve and my son was nine. There was another boy in the middle but he was stillborn.”
“Do you get to see them much?”
Washburn’s voice is harsh when he responds. “They’re dead. My wife moved back to Salt Lake and got a job. She wouldn’t take anything from me. She even left the cars behind and bought a used one, a tiny little thing, one of those Geos. She was taking the kids to a soccer game and a drunk in a pickup truck hit them head on. They all had seatbelts on, but the truck squashed them like bugs.”
Washburn vanishes for a while inside himself. I can think of nothing useful to say and so I keep my mouth shut. Eventually he stands up and looks down at me.
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” he says. “Your book, I mean. Give me a call, say in a month. I’ll have made up my mind then.” He pivots and walks away. I watch him go and then remember that I came in here for a beer, so I order one and take my time drinking it.
I think about what I have learned. Washburn lives alone and probably has few if any friends here, if anywhere. I am guessing that he feels guilty about his family. He is not looking to die, but he is not worried about the idea. That is probably why he has made no effort at security around his house. He told me to get back to him in a month. I think it will be less. I want to beat the snow. I want to finish with this list. I want it done. And after that? The question stops me in my tracks. I have never asked myself, what next? I finish a job, I wait for the next one, and life goes on, like a well-oiled machine. But what if I decide that there will not be a next job?
Ultimately, my mind refuses to deal with it, and I shake my head, hard, trying to empty it out. I drain my beer glass, get up, and head for the car. Finish this job first, I tell myself. Then worry about what next; but as I drive back toward Denver, the idea sneaks back again, quietly and stubbornly, and before I know it I am thinking about my little cabin in the Yaak. I have always thought that I would move there eventually. That is why I bought the place years ago. But that has always been a “one of these days” sort of plan, a thing I would get around to doing at some indeterminate time in the distant future. There was never any rush; but now it feels different. As the miles roll under my wheels, I can feel something shifting inside me, observe myself changing. It is
what they call a paradigm shift, a stepping outside the box, and the sensation is oddly physical. When I revealed my secret life to Katherine I had an epiphany, and now I am having another one. Up to now, moving to the Yaak has felt less like something I will do, and more like something that will happen when the fates decide. Now, as I grin like a monkey and slap the steering wheel around so hard that I almost veer off the road, I understand that moving is something I can decide to do, and that I can make that decision any time I choose to.
* * *
On the flight back to Seattle, I have a Scotch and water, and then settle back and try to nap. The airplane sounds lull me into a state somewhere between sleeping and waking, and I find myself daydreaming. It is an odd sort of daydream. I am aware of it, but not in control. In the dream, I have not beaten the snow, which is all around me. My cabin there, across a clearing, and Katherine and I are skiing through the woods. The snow is dry, and puffs up like smoke around our poles. Inside the cabin a stove is glowing with the heat of a wood fire, and even though I am outside I can see the flames clearly through the glass door of the stove, just as, although Katherine is ten feet ahead of me, I can feel her head on my shoulder. The dream stays with me until a small alteration in the airplane’s attitude brings me back to full awareness, and by the time we land, I have made up my mind that before I return to Colorado and Washburn, I am going to take a break. I will take Katherine to the Yaak, if she will go.