Badwater

by Clinton McKinzie

  He’d arrived just before lights out and was assigned a bunk in the main room. The other prisoners pretty much ignored him, except for a few illegals working on local ranches, who’d been picked up on minor charges—bullshit charges, according to Roberto—and were only being held because they couldn’t raise even a hundred bucks for bail.

  Jonah had kept to himself, and Roberto hadn’t seen any need to introduce himself as his protector. Some dirty looks were directed at the child-killer, but no one made any moves on him. At least not at first. The big man with the broken nose, Smit, hung out playing cards with the Anglo alcoholics. He’d only spoken to Roberto once, threatening to stick one of his canes up his ass if my brother and his new friends didn’t stop yammering in “Mexican.”

  At lights out, Jonah was placed in a separate cell off the rec room. The deputies closed the door but didn’t lock it. Smit was given his own cell, too. The deputy only pretended to lock it. Roberto told me the deputy was an old man with a crew cut. I guessed it was the same one who had jumped all over me for having Tased Smit three months ago. Tom, I remembered. The guards then went into their station across the hall from the main room and started popping popcorn and watching a movie.

  An hour later, Smit had slid his cell door open. Roberto faked sleep and watched as the wannabe biker padded over to Jonah’s cell and shoved open the door. When he went inside, there was a shout that was cut off. Roberto thought it was Jonah shouting, then Smit clamping a hand over his mouth.

  He wasn’t sure what to do, which was rare for my brother. But I hadn’t given him very good instructions. I’d been too sick with the thought of what I was doing to him to bother with a very detailed plan. He decided that maybe he shouldn’t give up the game too soon.

  It turned out that he acted with surprising subtlety. He started coughing, then faked a seizure. “A real paroxysm, like I was epileptic or something. I flopped all over the place, yelling and hooting and whacking the bars by the cot with my canes for good measure. You should have seen me, che. And heard me.” He laughed. “The two cops on duty came tearing out of that office with their hair on fire. They even called an ambulance, and had this sweet little blonde come down to check me out.”

  I knew that blonde, and knew it was a good thing she didn’t know Roberto was my brother. As mad as she was at me, she might have insisted on giving him multiple injections and a rectal exam.

  Smit had come running out of Jonah’s cell as soon as Roberto had started yelling and spasming. He’d walked back to his own cell and slammed the door. While the paramedics were there, Jonah staggered out. His face was bleeding. But all he’d said to the guards was that they’d forgotten to lock his cell.

  “That kid’s a stand-up guy. Didn’t bitch or moan or anything. Refused to even let that hot paramedic check out his face. He just demanded that they lock his cell properly. You could see he was scared, though. Dude was shaking like a leaf.”

  The next day there hadn’t been any trouble. But Roberto was pretty sure that more trouble was coming. He said Smit had stared at Jonah in the rec room all day long and that he made some threats, too, about how he was going to get “the faggot child-killer” and make him pay.

  “But I think everything’s cool tonight. This hard-ass chick locked them in tonight, not that old man. Really locked them—I watched her do it. Uh-oh, here she comes now. Take care, che. Don’t let the fuckers get you down. I got your back in here.”

  I just wished I were covering his.

  twenty-eight

  The next morning I learned that I was the one who’d been fucked.

  The throwaway newspaper on the rack at the bagel shop proclaimed it. Under an old picture of me, the caption read: “Update in River Killing: Cop Says Victim High.”

  I felt my stomach try to crawl up my throat, like someone had kneed me in the groin. The betrayal was so unexpected, so total, that I couldn’t really get a grasp on the enormity of it. It just couldn’t be true. Brandy was tough—I knew that. Dedicated, too, and I knew she could play hard, if not dirty. She’d shown that at the suppression hearing. But she’d seemed straightforward. Sympathetic. Not evil.

  And I just couldn’t possibly be this frigging stupid.

  I tried to read the article but couldn’t seem to digest it. My eyes were unable to keep their focus. But behind the counter I could make out similar headlines—less sensational but just as fatal to me—in the regional papers.

  I got back in the Pig without my bagels. I’d intended to take them to Luke as a sort of peace offering before making another pitch for lightening up on Jonah. Mungo had to remind me by sniffing then slapping at me with her paw. I climbed back out, retrieved the sack from a scowling bagel-lady, paid, and returned. Turning on the engine, I was tempted to just drive out of town. Head for the hills. The temptation was pretty strong.

  I’d been accused of a lot of things in recent years. Of naïveté. Of trickery. Of abuse. Of deceit. Of immorality. Of murder, even. Shit, multiple murders. And a lot of it was true. But I’d never been accused of stupidity.

  Now I would be. And it would be one hundred percent true.

  But I didn’t head for the hills. The only way to face something like this was head-on. My brother had taught me that, and my dad before him. When there’s something you fear, you never run and let it chase you. Instead you get in its face. Even if it’s going to kick your ass. So I pulled out—nearly getting T-boned by a passing pickup—and headed for the county attorney’s office.

  The secretary didn’t smile or say hello when I walked in. As much as she probably disliked her boss, it was clear she now hated me. I’ve been given a lot of ugly looks, but the one that accused me of being a traitor was the worst.

  Luke had his gun on his desk.

  My first thought was that he was going to shoot himself. Then I saw his expression, and decided no, he was going to shoot me.

  Ostensibly, he was cleaning it. At least there was a can of oil, a toothbrush, and some newspapers spread on the desk.

  He pointed it at me—the toothbrush—and said, “I once saved your life.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “I’m goddamn sorry I did that. Why the fuck are you trying to ruin me?”

  “All I did was tell the truth, Luke.”

  He just stared.

  He needed to let it out. I gave him the opportunity.

  “For what it’s worth,” I told him, “I didn’t mean for this to happen. She promised me our talk was confidential. I just told her the truth.”

  But he didn’t accept my implicit offer. He didn’t ridicule me, or blow up and start screaming, or call me names. He just kept looking at me as he said, “Your office wants to talk to you after we’re through here. And man, are we through.”

  It was blazing hot outside at nine in the morning. There wasn’t a cloud, a breeze, or a sign of yesterday’s storm. The black asphalt of the Outrider’s parking lot absorbed and intensified it, but it was nothing like the heat I was feeling. That heat was radioactive. My head felt like it was about to explode.

  An air conditioner rattled beside the door and the curtain was closed. I beat on the door five times with the heel of my fist.

  If I were capable of being surprised by anything anymore, I would have been surprised by who answered the door. It was Bogey. My first instinct was to punch him in the face. My second was that I had the wrong room. Then the first thought was reinforced when I saw Brandy sitting on the unmade bed behind him.

  “Good morning, Agent Burns,” Bogey said. “I certainly appreciate how you’ve helped us.”

  The lawyer wasn’t smirking. He appeared exhausted, as if he’d been up all night. Working the phones and celebrating, probably. His hair was perfect, of course, and he’d applied his usual overdose of cologne, but there were bags under his eyes. Oddly, for once he seemed sincere rather than slick. He probably believed I’d kill him if he played it any other way. And he might have been right.

  I looked at Brandy again. She loo
ked like she’d just woken up. Her hair was a mess, and she was wearing a T-shirt—the one I’d lent her last night—and that was all. There was a newspaper lying guiltily on the bed beside her. She looked as shell-shocked at being confronted and exposed as I’d been when seeing my own stupidity announced in the headlines. But what the hell had she expected? Did she think the next time we saw each other I’d still be fawning all over her?

  All I could do was stare at her. She couldn’t meet my eyes. She bent over and covered her face with her hands.

  I turned around and walked away.

  twenty-nine

  The scene of the crime did nothing to cool me down. I paused in the cave only long enough to yank the rope off my back and tie one end into the anchors. After giving it a jerk to check that it was secure, I threaded it through the self-belay device attached to my harness. Breathing hard before even making the first move, I raised my arms and sank them into the cold, wide crack. I launched myself out into space.

  I’d never been a grunter, but I was grunting with each explosive exhalation by the time I reached the first cam fifteen feet out. I got the rope clipped to it, but just barely. My whole body was shaking hard, but I was determined not to fall this time. Falling was what I’d been doing all summer. Shit, for the past couple of years. Now I needed to do something different.

  With my right arm jammed elbow-and-palm over my head, my left elbow fiercely wedged in the crack out in front, my head twisted in for good measure, and my legs doing only God knows what, I wormed my way under the cam. The hundred feet of empty air below sucked at me, but not nearly as much as the lead weight in my heart.

  I made it to where the crack squeezed down. Like I’d done before, I let my legs drop. The shift in weight nearly ripped me out, but I grimly held on. I even managed to kick my feet up and in ahead of me. Grunting louder now, each sucking gasp followed by what sounded like “Fuck!” I worked them in until my heels and toes were fixed in place on opposite sides of the crack. Then I slowly released the pressure on my arms and face and let my torso scrape down out of the crack, until, with a snap, I was hanging upside-down by just my feet. I was Batman again, but this time there was no exultant shout.

  I rested for only a few seconds before I jackknifed up with a violent twist of my gut and sank my arms and shoulders back into the roof. Worming again, I burrowed onward though the crack.

  Then I froze. It was an instinct more than a conscious thought to place some more protection. But I didn’t have any. I’d left it all a hundred feet below. I’d failed so many times that I had unconsciously stopped carrying the extra weight. I couldn’t look behind me to see how far I was past the last cam, but I could manage to see in front of me—see just how far I was from the roof’s far lip.

  It was a distance of only ten feet. I was ten feet away from pulling off the hardest crack in the world.

  And I didn’t give a damn.

  But I fought on, because that’s all there was for me to do.

  My gasps grew more ragged, and the trembling increased. My muscles were so jam-packed with lactic acid that it felt like they might detonate.

  Then, almost unbelievably, there was nothing for my right hand. My arm passing through the air very nearly levered me out of the crack. There was just sky. Blue sky. I reached straight up and my fingers caressed a flat expanse of vertical rock. I was just seconds from total collapse. But there was nothing for me to hold on to now. And there was nothing backing me up.

  With my searching arm extended so high that my face was in my armpit, I felt an edge. It seemed huge—at least an inch of positive traction. And it was hot from being in the sun. It was the first sun-touched rock on the entire climb. It felt like the rim of a sacred golden chalice.

  I wrapped my fingertips over it, then put my thumb on top of them, crimping for every added ounce of strength. Then I pulled.

  Nothing happened. I pulled again, but I had nothing left. My body had maxed out. My heart rate had been red-lined for way too long, the fire in every muscle had burned out, and the blood and oxygen carried through my veins were at a dead stop. Like an engine run at high torque without oil, I became a solid block of cramping. I dropped out of the rock, swung through space, and crashed into the wall.

  “It’s me,” I said into the phone. “I heard you wanted to talk.”

  The only reply for a solid minute was the ragged breathing of an emphysemic. Beyond it I could hear the sound of wind and tires on asphalt.

  “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you all day.”

  “I know. When I turned on my phone, I had sixteen messages from either you or your secretary.”

  “Well?”

  “I’ve been climbing, Ross.”

  “I figured you’d run for the border. Or maybe that you’d fallen and finally managed to kill yourself. I was kind of hoping. You’ve let me down again.”

  “I guess you aren’t the only one.”

  I could hear my boss take a long suck on one of the unfiltered cigarettes he’d started smoking again.

  “So where are you?”

  “At my camp. About forty minutes outside Badwater.”

  “I’ll be there in two hours.”

  “You won’t be able to get your sedan into the valley.”

  Especially not the way the suspension on the driver’s side was already riding on the pads from the weight of McGee’s bulk.

  “You’re going to meet me in town, QuickDraw. I’ll even let you pick the place. The condemned man gets his choice of a last meal. Just make it something good. I’m starving, and eating you alive won’t fill me up.”

  “There’s a Mexican place called Cesar’s.”

  I didn’t mention that the food was awful. I started to describe how to get there, but found that I was speaking to a dead phone. After tossing it into the tent, I dug around in the back of the Pig until I found my little Tupperware stash. Then I packed a bowl.

  One of the messages left on my phone was from Brandy. It wasn’t until days later that I listened to it because I recognized her number on the caller ID, but here is what it said:

  “Anton . . . I don’t know what to say. . . . You’ll probably never speak to me again. I don’t blame you. But I’m sorry. So sorry. I told Bogey because I thought he was my friend and mentor, and because he promised to keep it quiet until we figured out what we were going to do. I didn’t know he’d start making calls, that he’d use it that very night. I just felt . . . I guess I felt duty-bound to tell him. For Jonah’s sake. Then he betrayed me, Anton . . . and I guess I betrayed you. I’m sorry.”

  thirty

  Cesar’s was busy. And like the last time I was there, it was only at the bar that the crowd was gathered. The restaurant section remained as dark and silent as a cave except for the firefly flickers of a few red-globed candles. I checked out the crowd of mostly oil workers and their dates, wary of again running into the Mann twins. It was a relief that they weren’t there. I had enough problems this evening. I was too tired and too angry and too stoned for another confrontation.

  Wading into the gloom of the restaurant portion with dark red vinyl booths and black walls, I could spot only one customer ignorant of the restaurant’s terrible food. He looked as if he belonged in the darkness.

  “Howdy, Ross.”

  “QuickDraw” came a grumble from the shadows.

  Ross McGee was hunched over one of the red-globed candles, his features colored crimson. Both beard and eyebrows bristled with stiff white hair. He resembled a troll king more than a lawyer and now bureaucrat. But I had enormous respect for the man. As a prosecutor, he’d put more people away for life than anyone in the state. He was the go-to guy when someone very bad needed to be put away for a very long time. When he was at the height of his powers, just his appearance at an arraignment could make defense attorneys swoon. But that was before poor health and increasing cantankerousness had forced the office to chain him to a desk. His eccentricities, once considered charming, were now labeled
profane. Because of his harmless flirting with every woman he came across, the whole office was forced to go through sexual harassment training annually. For years they’d been waiting for him to quit or die—he knew where all the bodies were buried so he could never be fired. But he just kept hanging on. He would have made a hell of a climber.

  “You’re looking good,” I told him, lying.

  McGee was obese, his tobacco breath came in rasps, and his eyes were yellow and watery but somehow still fierce.

  “Bite me,” he replied.

  I slid into the booth. The waitress appeared—the same one as the last time I’d been here, the one with the sticky curls and the four-inch bangs ironed up like a cresting wave. She listened to me order a margarita on the rocks before walking off without a word.

  “You must have already shown her your considerable charms, Ross.”

  “She keeps up that attitude, I’m not going to show her. I’ll keep my belt buckled and my zipper high and tight.”

  “That’s cruel, Ross. Really cruel. How long are you staying for, anyway?”

  “I’m going to stay in this backwards-ass town as long as it takes. Your little stunt in today’s paper was the last straw—probation’s revoked. You’ve got a new baby-sitter, QuickDraw. Until this trial’s over.”

  “What’s going to happen then?”

  He kissed his fat fingers and then blew on them.

  “Then you’re gone.”

  I met McGee’s watery stare over the candle.

  “Gone? You mean I’m fired?”

  McGee shook his head. “No. You’re going to resign. You don’t, and they’re going to make it hard for you. Harder, I should say. Much harder.”